The Last Horcrux
by Ansketil and Lilacs
Summary: In the battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter makes a fatal error. Now Lord Voldemort rules Wizarding Britain and Harry's fate is sealed. Dark, angsty LV/HP
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **_The Last Horcrux_

**Disclaimer:** We do not own Harry Potter, nor are we making any money by doing this.

**Authors:** ladyoflilacs and What-Ansketil-Did-Next

**Summary:** In the battle of Hogwarts, Harry makes a fatal error. Now Lord Voldemort rules Wizarding Britain and Harry's fate is sealed…

**Warnings:** Angst, graphic violence, scenes of a sexual nature

**Authors' Notes:** Hello everyone, us again, we're still on track with _Yew and Holly, _but we realised we had a lot of stuff that has never seen the light of day. This is a brand new thing, and has nothing to do with _In Somno Veritas_ – except that it stars our favourite two wizards, of course. We hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Chapter I**

* * *

He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. The time had come to leave this pitiful shack and take charge with a wand that would now do his full bidding. He pointed it at the protective sphere encasing his precious Horcrux, lifting it away from his servant - who crumpled to the floor, blood gushing from his neck - as Lord Voldemort swept from the room.

The Dark Lord stalked up the long corridor, his mind roiling with purpose, Nagini trailing behind him. The question of the Elder Wand's allegiance, which had so troubled him, had finally been resolved. The Deathstick had no brother - its core of Thestral hair was no kin to Potter's. It seemed to hum under his fingers as Voldemort contemplated his final encounter with the boy; eager, perhaps, to cast that most finite of curses. It would not shatter, as Lucius' wand had, upon meeting Potter's weapon. He trailed it through the air and the time lit up the darkness in a trail of fire: _eleven fifty-one._ The deadline he had set was about to expire.

He emerged into the chaos of battle. The once-pristine lawns of the school were scarred by combat. Far more than Severus' sacrifice, Voldemort regretted the destruction of this, his first kingdom. A Giant was gouging holes in the second floor of the castle and, from all directions, came the rapid flash and fire of duelling sorcerers, the brilliance of their curses lighting the mist of drifting umbra bending to drink the souls of Lord Voldemort's enemies.

Pale feet lifted from the earth as he took to the sky, Nagini's glittering sphere arcing after him through the air. The night was burning: alive with smoke and furious magic. He breathed in the anarchy over which he flew, exalting in his absolute primacy. _He cannot have found the diadem,_ Voldemort reassured himself, _only I ever plumbed such secrets..._ It was tempting to divert from his original plan, to rush to secure his treasure, but Voldemort would keep his word to those who defended Hogwarts so very bravely and to such little purpose. He was, after all, their lord.

"You have fought," he spoke softly into the spring night, his powerful magic carrying his cold voice to the ears of every creature struggling far below, "valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery."

It was, he realised, almost seven years since he had said such words to the Potter child. How strange. Fate was aligning - this time the Dark Lord would not fail. "Yet you have sustained heavy losses." It stiffened his resolve and rage flumed behind his eyes to think of that boy who had cost him more than he could ever hope to regain. "If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish for this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste."

He took a breath of cool air, "Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured." All of it light as he, each silken word imbued with icy grace. He permitted them this reprieve in order to regroup his own scattered forces and to let Potter gaze upon the corpses of his schoolmates and professors. The boy who had run so far so fast to save a mere godfather would not, Voldemort was certain, be able resist the ultimatum the Dark Lord was about to offer.

"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every man, woman and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."

And, true to his word, Voldemort swiftly descended to a clearing in the forest that had once held a nest of great spiders, striking up a bonfire with a roar of power, pacing in the shadow of its billowing flames, staring into its golden heat and striving to curb his impatience. Harry Potter would be watching them levitate the fallen into neat lines, his greatest weakness warring with his fierce, Gryffindor heart.

His Death Eaters arrived in small groups. Some were injured and others had questions, he knew, but he made no move to assist or direct them. They had heard the choice he had given the boy, as everyone had, and their only conversation was the occasional muted, muttered whisper. None of them dared to disturb his vigil.

Voldemort closed his eyes - the Deathstick pressed between his palms - and awaited Harry Potter.

* * *

Finally, the truth.

Harry lay still on the floor. He could see perfectly each strand of carpet, the dust and fuzz which enveloped each one like a halo. He felt somehow both removed from his body and excruciatingly aware of it; he was numb, separate, unable to completely process what was about to happen to him - and yet he felt the softness of the rug against his cheek, the cool rush of air filling up his lungs and leaving them again. Little details that he had never taken the time to appreciate. The small, wonderful things, the minutiae of life, which he would never get to experience again.

It was all finally beginning to make sense. He felt nauseous with the awful, dizzying finality of it. Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, Dumbledore's voice echoed in his mind, as though from the end of a very long tunnel. All this time, Harry had been hunting Horcruxes, destroying the pieces of Voldemort's soul - when, in the end, this meant he would need to destroy himself.

But Dumbledore had overestimated him. Harry hadn't been able to kill the snake. As long as Nagini still lived, Voldemort would as well - even if Harry sacrificed himself, even if Voldemort's body was still somehow destroyed. Perhaps this wouldn't matter if there had been anyone else to take on the responsibility of killing Nagini. But no one else knew what she was except for Harry, now that Ron and Hermione were gone.

It was suddenly very difficult for him to breathe. Harry pushed himself up, throat tightening. He ran a hand over his pale face - he needed to be rational; this was no time to get emotional. But some fierce, irrepressible flame of anger raged within him at the thought of his two best friends, lying cold and blank-eyed on the ground. He would not let them die in vain.

But they would have - it would have all been in vain - if Nagini was allowed to live. And there would be no one left to kill her, no one alive who understood the necessity of her death, if Harry were to sacrifice himself now. Perhaps he could tell one of the others, explain what the Horcruxes were and what needed to be done to them, before he went to Voldemort? But no... they would never allow him to turn himself over, even if they knew what Harry did about his scar. Dumbledore was strong enough to accept what needed to be done, no matter how painful - but could Harry say the same for everyone else? Would McGonagall, Mrs Weasley, or Ginny feel the same way?

Harry knew the answer before the question had even fully formed in his mind. They loved him too deeply; they would never let Harry go through with this, even if it meant he was saving their lives. And, in the end, that was just as bad as allowing Nagini to live as well.

No. It had to be him. Besides which, the window of opportunity Voldemort had given him to hand himself in was rapidly closing. There was no time for explanations or arguments.

It was up to Harry to finish this, just as Dumbledore intended.

Harry made his way, invisible, through the empty castle. He was still perceiving the world around him as though through a thick veil, or through ears stuffed with cotton. His feet seemed to carry him on their own accord, independent of the rest of his body, through these corridors which had held his most precious memories. All he seemed to be able to focus on was the mad beating of his heart, pounding furiously against the cage of his ribs. It seemed to be trying to escape the prison of this body, which did not have very much longer left to live.

He stopped only, on a whim, to tell Neville about Nagini as well - just in case, Harry told himself. Just in case something went wrong, and Voldemort killed him straightaway. There would be one last person. The secret would not die with him.

"All right, Harry," Neville said, nodding, and he felt some of the awful weight lift from his shoulders. "You're okay, are you?"

"I'm fine," he said, through a very dry mouth. "Thanks, Neville."

"We're all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?"

Harry's chest grew tight. "Yeah, I -" But he couldn't finish; an even heavier weight seemed to have settled over his lungs, preventing him from continuing. Neville simply patted his shoulder, nodding, and left him.

There wouldn't be any more fighting, Harry had wanted to say. No one else would have to die on his account. Harry was going to finish it all, right now - he would kill Nagini, and then Voldemort would kill him, leaving Tom Riddle vulnerable at last to death, when it came for him.

And it would come.

Harry took a deep, steadying breath, touched the wand inside his shirt, and walked out the huge doors of the Entrance Hall for the very last time.

* * *

"No sign of him, my Lord," one of his Death Eaters voiced from the edge of those who had gathered around the warmth of the bonfire. Voldemort paid him no attention. It was almost time. Everything was prepared. But perhaps he would have to hunt Potter down and slay his protectors himself... The Dark Lord rolled the Elder Wand between his fingers, tired of this long night and more than ready to mete out much deserved death to those who defied Lord Voldemort.

Still, it irritated him to have misjudged the boy.

"My Lord -" Bella interrupted his musing, but he immediately held up a hand to silence her, having no desire to hear her cloying, obsequious opinions at such a time as this, and returned his gaze to the leaping flames.

"I thought he would come," Voldemort murmured, suddenly unsure. He had been so certain of the boy's weakness. "I was, it seems... mistaken." He could sense his servants drawing away in fear of his displeasure, yet his crimson eyes did not leave the fire. What did it matter? He was not angry. This path would bring him more satisfaction, in the end. All of those who resisted would meet the same fate as the boy's parents.

* * *

There was complete silence. The only sound was the spit and crackle of the flames. Harry let the Resurrection Stone roll from his fingers to the ground, disappearing among the leaves and taking the ghosts of his loved ones with it. With every ounce of courage he possessed, Harry pulled off his father's cloak and stepped forward.

"You weren't."

* * *

And there he was, at the edge of the clearing, walking toward the Dark Lord. Voldemort turned, rooted to where he stood, unable to think now that the moment he had been anticipating for so very long was stretching out in front of him through the curtain of fire. Voices screamed, roared, jeered, and laughed but all Voldemort heard was his own quickening heartbeat. At last.

The boy did not draw his wand. Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, curious at this uncharacteristically meek surrender. Could it really be so easy, after all this time? "Harry Potter," he acknowledged softly, his lipless mouth curling upward with that cold, cruel sense of purpose that he always experienced at moments such as this. "The boy who lived."

Another heartbeat, and there was no rage now, only relief that he was about to put an end to prophecy and any doubt as to Lord Voldemort's power. And, if he was honest, a little disappointment that Potter appeared so resigned to death. But it would work this time, he knew. Nothing had been left to chance. Every variable had been calculated. Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, drawing in a slow breath. He would not prevaricate, nor make the boy scream. The time for such things was long past. It would be enough to see Potter fall.

* * *

The strange, benumbing mist that had been hanging over Harry's world suddenly lifted, cut through by the sound of Voldemort's voice. Harry was thrown abruptly back into his own body. He felt suddenly sick with terror; it took all of his strength to keep his hands from trembling; but still he could not move, could not make his mouth form words.

Something moved in the corner of his vision, and his eyes flicked to Nagini, floating behind Voldemort in a cloud of enchantments. His wand seemed to burn in his pocket, but he knew that to draw it now, among all these Death Eaters, would mean certain death before he'd had a chance to finish this final responsibility. Besides, the snake was clearly smothered in protective spells. Harry wouldn't even know how to begin cutting through those. He would need to reach her another way.

And then Lord Voldemort pointed the Elder Wand at him. His heart lurched with fear - _not yet, _he thought frantically - _not yet, it isn't time_ -

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Riddle," he heard himself say, and his voice sounded loud and calm, not at all how he felt.

* * *

Voldemort narrowed his crimson eyes. His whole body was taut with fury, yet he could do nothing but stare at the boy, mesmerised by the possibility of some final trick of fortune that would thwart his curse. He hissed, gliding forward, crossing the bonfire in a plume of darkness to coalesce mere metres from Potter, the Deathstick ready to strike. "Oh?" he exhaled softly. "What do you imagine will save you this time?" The forest was utterly silent as it waited for Potter's answer; it was as if only they two breathed.

* * *

Harry's heart was beating very fast. His fingers jerked with the urge to draw his wand; it was maddening to simply stand here, utterly defenceless, with Lord Voldemort standing a mere arm's length away from him. But he forced himself to remain calm, anchored by his purpose. "You will."

* * *

"I?" he asked, incredulously. He began to laugh, humourless and insane, "I,_ Lord Voldemort_, shall save Harry Potter." The Dark Lord paused as the crowd began to titter and jeer. Behind him, he could hear Bellatrix giggling. "And why should I grant you mercy when all you have done, ever since your Mudblood mother whelped you, is stand in my way?"

* * *

The thought of his mother might have infuriated him if he hadn't just finished speaking to her for the first time in his life. Instead, Harry felt fortified by the reminder of her faith and pride in him. You've been so brave, she'd said, smiling, and she was right. He'd made it this far. He could do this. "Because killing me right now would be a big mistake," said Harry calmly, over the taunts of the watching Death Eaters. "Even bigger than the one you made when you tried to kill me sixteen years ago."

* * *

"I do not see anyone here willing to run forwards and take my curse for you," Voldemort scoffed, yet fear began to eat at his confidence. _What if Potter had one last secret?_ Surely, surely now the Dark Lord understood every mystery, every trick of happenstance that had protected the boy in the past? The half-giant raged against his bonds. "Well, it seems there is one," he sneered, "perhaps I will be magnanimous and allow him to bear your body back to the school. He was ever fit for such menial tasks." Voldemort stopped talking, abruptly aware that insulting Hagrid had more to do with nerves than with any real malice. He could not afford to lose focus. Not now.

* * *

An odd thing was happening within him. He seemed to have crossed beyond fear; he felt high with adrenaline and purpose. Because Voldemort was scared. Harry had only seen it briefly, flashing across those terrifying red eyes in the space of a heartbeat - but it was there, he'd seen it, and he, Harry, had put it there. He'd never felt more daring.

"You still don't get it, Riddle, do you? No one else has to take any more curses for me. The damage has already been done. You did it yourself, in fact - that night in Gordric's Hollow." Harry smiled, an unpleasant, spiteful smile that couldn't have been any further from the ones he gave his friends. "You thought you could split your soul however many times you wanted, and nothing bad would come of it, did you? Well, when your curse backfired, it simply couldn't hold itself together anymore. A piece of it got blasted apart from the rest. And it attached itself to the only other person who was still alive there that night." Harry's voice was low and very soft now; he stared into those horrible crimson eyes. "To me."

* * *

Everything faltered. The forest blurred around him. Voldemort blinked and realised, as though from a great distance - as though it were not part of him at all - his hand was shaking. He could not seem to hold it still. A vast and terrible silence engulfed him, amplifying every shuddering breath he eked in and out. The Elder Wand buzzed with static and he almost dropped it. It was impossible, it..._ it..._

There was no lie in Potter's voice. Every word blazed truth. Voldemort cried out as though struck.

* * *

"It's true," Harry said maliciously, revelling in Voldemort's distress. He wished that it really had been just the two of them - that he could have taken advantage of Riddle's shock to strike the snake. But the circle of Death Eaters was still there, looking on in stunned, confused silence. "It's true," he repeated. "Didn't you ever wonder why I can speak Parseltongue? Why we can read each other's thoughts? There's a piece of your soul living in my scar. Of course Dumbledore would figure it out before you would. So go on, Riddle... kill me. But only if you want to destroy one of the last Horcruxes you still have left alive."

* * *

He shook his head as he keened, desperately trying to form words adequate to the avalanche of fear and fury that buried every thought in its wake. Lord Voldemort had never told a single person of his Horcruxes, and this - this _child_ had - _was_ - revealing his secret all of his assembled servants. The ring, the cup, the diary, the locket... so many of his Horcruxes, most important and precious, stolen and desecrated. And now... undeserving... impertinent... why was his throat so very dry? Voldemort gripped the Deathstick so tightly that his trembling fingers were beginning to go numb. Gasping, his lungs refusing to take in enough air, he barely managed to hiss: "You... you_ lie!"_ And, even as he spoke, he knew that such a meagre offering would not convince a single one of those present.

* * *

"Kill me, then, if you're so sure," Harry said softly. He felt a sort of wild, reckless freedom. Standing before Death, facing the other end of the most powerful wand in the world, Harry found that he had accepted it - he knew it was coming for him, that it was necessary to rid the world of Voldemort forever, just as surely as he knew that Voldemort would not, could not kill him right now. Not before Harry had a chance to get to the snake. He felt giddy with a heady mixture of fear and power. "I'm here, just as you asked - wandless and ready to die. What are you waiting for?"

* * *

Ready to die. How could the boy be so cavalier with his - their - lives? Potter's willing, wandless bravado terrified Voldemort. He needed to end this, and quickly. Retake control. _What are you waiting for?_ The Dark Lord shrieked murder at the top of his lungs and his curse hit Potter square in the chest.

* * *

_Harry dreamt of a bright train station that didn't go anywhere and Albus Dumbledore, all in white, and full of deep disappointment…_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter II**

* * *

Everything hurt. His limbs were too heavy; his tongue was dry and sticky. He felt as though he'd been run over repeatedly in his sleep.

But he was, at least, somewhere safe and warm. Harry made a small noise of discomfort, stretching his aching arms. _How long did he have before Hermione woke them? She'd probably already gotten started on breakfast..._

And then the memory of her slackened face, the reflection of fire dancing in her wide, unseeing eyes, hit Harry like a sack of bricks. It was like a dam had burst open inside his mind; the images came rushing forth like icy water: the limp bodies of the dead and dying - Hogwarts, the only home he had ever known, roaring with flames - Snape and his mother in a grassy field - the_ forest..._

Harry's eyes flew open with a shallow gasp. He was no longer in the empty clearing. Someone had brought him to a large bed in a small, dimly-lit room of stone. His fingers immediately grasped at his chest, but his wand was nowhere to be found. His clothes had been removed - someone had changed him into a simple black robe. He was utterly vulnerable. Mind reeling, Harry rolled over, his limbs groaning with the effort - and choked on a cry of shock.

Lord Voldemort stood at the end of Harry's bed, tall, pale, and terrifying.

"You!" Harry breathed in horror, and scrambled upright. Voldemort said nothing. "You - what did you do to me? What happened to the battle?-!"

"I killed you," Voldemort answered quietly. "I put your corpse on display for all to see and then, when I deemed them to have had their fill, I brought you here. You are _dead_, Harry Potter, to all those who would seek you out. You are mine."

The room seemed to be closing in on him. His lungs felt tight, like they couldn't fit in the proper amount of air. "No." He backed further up the bed, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. "No, that's impossible - I'm alive - they wouldn't simply give me up for - for dead -" He heard Neville's words, as though they had been spoken a thousand years ago: _We're all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?_

The crimson eyes glittered. "It is a very old Egyptian curse, similar to the Draught of Living Death. Quite effective, I assure you. In fact, the only reason we are having this conversation is because, in keeping you ensorcelled for another month, I would risk you slipping away altogether." Voldemort looked him up and down coldly. "I suggest you resign yourself to this situation, as I have, and abandon any notion of rescue or escape. Things will go much better for you if you do."

"Like hell I will!" Harry flew off the bed - and nearly fell over. His kneecaps screamed with pain; his entire body felt slow and heavy with disuse. But he forced himself to stumble painfully across the cold stone floor all the same, gasping, and collapsed against a hard wall. He used it to support himself, slinking backward into a corner. "There's no door here," he breathed, eyes darting around the room and back to Riddle. "There's no way out. You've strung up my body on display for a month and then locked me in a room with no bloody exit - and you expect me to simply _resign_ myself to the situation?-!"

"You are exaggerating matters," Voldemort answered with chilly disregard for Harry's distress. "I would by no means risk damaging you by stringing you anywhere. I displayed you with dignity for three nights and them removed you to this place for safe-keeping, where you have remained in comfort ever since."

A bubble of mad laughter escaped him. Harry's fingers grappled for purchase against the smooth, stone wall. "How generous of you," he spat; he felt as though he might be sick. This was not the way things were supposed to have happened. "And you really think that you'll get away with this? That they'll let me stay here?"

"Of course," Voldemort answered immediately, "even if they thought you were alive - and I may say there were some very affecting farewells murmured over your casket - I am the only one who knows where we are and, just to be quite sure, I have employed a Fidelius Charm." The Dark Lord treated him to a taut, horrible leer.

It took every ounce of energy Harry had not to launch himself at Riddle's smug face. He had no wand, he reminded himself with excessive restraint, and his muscles had clearly suffered some kind of atrophy while he'd been under the influence of Voldemort's freaky Egyptian Dark curse - whereas Voldemort was armed with not only magic but also the knowledge of how the hell he could get out of here.

"Come," Voldemort held out a hand to him, "let us return you to bed and I shall summon you dinner. You are human and have not eaten for five months. It is only sensible."

Five months? Harry was not sure what was more shocking - that he had been sleeping for five months or that Lord Voldemort was offering him food. "I'm not touching anything you give me," he scowled, even though he was suddenly and painfully aware of how empty his stomach was.

"Potter, let me be clear," Voldemort said slowly, gliding toward him, "I will not allow you to starve. If you refuse to be sensible then I will return when you are insensate and force feed you. I am sure you will agree that such a thing would please neither of us. Come, spare yourself such indignity." A long-fingered hand was suddenly at his shoulder and his legs left the floor, lifting him smoothly back onto the bed.

He felt his rage build and welter beneath his skin, even as his aching limbs sighed in relief. He yanked himself violently out of Voldemort's grasp. "No - let _me_ be clear. You've locked me in a windowless room hardly bigger than my aunt's kitchen and watched me sleep for five months. I don't think I've got much dignity left to lose. And if you really think you're going to keep me here, you can be sure I'm going to make this as difficult for you as I possibly can." Harry snarled at him. "You've taken _everything_ from me! You've got nothing left to hang over my head. Dignity is the_ last_ thing on my mind right now."

Voldemort regarded him with an oddly solemn expression. "There is always further to fall, Potter, always more left to lose." He glanced away and, in that brief moment, Harry almost glimpsed pain in those awful crimson eyes, but then they were burning into his with a fury that ripped viciously into his scar. "You have no right to complain of such treatment, when you built this prison with each of my Horcruxes you destroyed!"

Harry's anger returned to him full-force. "You've been trying to kill me since before I could even talk! What did you _expect,_ exactly?"

Voldemort shot him a poisonous glare. "You should be grateful I had cause to let you live -_ and live you shall _- to preserve Lord Voldemort's immortality. _That_ shall be the irony of the long, tedious life you have yet to live within these four walls."

"Anyone would rather be dead than stuck here with you," Harry hissed, gripping the sheets. "But that means you're stuck with me as well, aren't you? And I swear you'll soon be sorry it was me you went after that night - you'll be wishing you tried to kill any other infant in the entire world - because I'm going to make every moment of your bloody immortality as miserable as I'm able!"

_"Crucio!"_

Pain like he had never known shot through him; Harry's body thrashed and contorted across the bed. A scream broke through his teeth, digging brutally into his bottom lip to keep himself from crying out. He felt as though he'd been sliced open, pain reaching beneath his skin and gripping the very center of his being... Every cell in his body was aflame with agony... It would never end...

And then it did, leaving every part of him aching in its wake. "I urge you, Potter, not to confuse which of us has the ability to render the other's existence a misery."

Still panting, Harry summoned all of his strength and spat a mouthful of blood on Voldemort's robes.

There was a chilly sigh, as though the evil git was disappointed. "All of this really is quite unnecessary. If you continue with this behaviour you will force me to discipline you further. It would be far better for you to simply accept your fate. This need not be unpleasant, Harry..." And suddenly, everywhere there had been pain, a warm balm seemed to settle, as though he were sunning himself on a summer's day. All of the agony just melted away into a haze of pleasurable relief.

For a moment, Harry found himself simply sinking into the warm, sprawling pleasure of it - _what had he even been so angry about, when he could just let himself feel so good instead?_ And then he caught a glimpse of red eyes through the fog enveloping him, and he was yanked swiftly back into his own thoughts. Still trying to catch his breath, he struggled pathetically across the bed, away from Voldemort, trying to recover his presence of mind - and then he rolled in a heap of painful limbs onto the hard, cold floor.

He groaned as Voldemort's magic abandoned him, leaving him sore and exhausted. He leaned his head back against the bed, closing his eyes and breathing heavily. "Go - to - hell."

Once again, the Dark Lord levitated him back onto the bed. "This is foolishness," he hissed. "You shall eat, and then I will leave you to rest." And Voldemort summoned a spoon and bowl of hot, sweet-smelling porridge and offered it to Harry. "Now, you may eat it yourself, or I can force you to do so. It is entirely your choice and a matter of perfect indifference to Lord Voldemort."

Harry scowled at the bowl of porridge, furious with his stomach for choosing this moment to remind him of how hungry he was. "And how will you do that? Torture me some more, will you? I don't think I'll be able to hold very much down if you keep making me cough up blood."

Voldemort seated himself gracefully on the edge of the bed. "There are various hexes and rituals which would allow me to control your actions. The alternative, of course, would be to use the piece of my soul inside you to influence you, and I suppose there is always the option of outright possession available to me." Pale, spidery fingers held out the steaming bowl. "It really would be much more pleasant if you would simply eat it yourself, especially if you wish me to depart with any celerity."

Harry snatched the bowl from him. He did not think about how good it smelt as he stirred it with his spoon, and he certainly didn't enjoy the taste of it as he took a small spoonful. He ate in obstinate silence, staring fixedly at the wall. It felt strange, eating porridge in bed - a bit like being in the Hospital Wing while Madame Pomfrey was nursing him back to health. Except it was Lord Voldemort who was trying to make him feel better after forcing him into a coma for five months and then torturing him within an hour of waking up again.

"I have left you a pitcher of water and a receptacle for your ablutions is under the bed. Is there anything else you would like before I leave? Books, perhaps? Or possibly an animal to keep you company? I have always found an animal companion to be-" Voldemort's cold voice hitched "...soothing."

Harry said nothing, chewing angrily and staring at the wall. Had Neville killed the snake after all? He wasn't sure if he would even be happy about this. After all, the entire reason Harry had gotten into this mess in the first place was so that he could destroy Nagini himself; the thought that this might all have been for nothing was appalling to him.

"You are my last Horcrux and, while caution necessitates your captivity, it is not my aim to torment you. I know what it is to be cast into helpless exile from all you have known. If there is something that will ease the burden of your imprisonment here...?"

Harry looked up suddenly. "Molly and Arthur Weasley... Ginny Weasley... what happened to them? In the battle?"

"You will have to forgive me, I am aware of Arthur Weasley, but... Molly is the daughter and Ginny is the mother? Is that right?"

He could suddenly picture Ginny in his mind as clearly as though she were right before him - her flaming red hair, her bright smile touching her eyes as she turned to look at him... His chest tightened, and his mouth went very dry. "Ginny is - the daughter. A year younger than me. Please… did they survive?"

"Molly Weasley slew Bella Lestrange and then fell to my wand. Her husband escaped with some of their male children, but I have no knowledge of what befell their daughter - I did not see her amongst the living or the dead at the end. But I did glimpse her during the battle. A talented young witch and exceptionally valiant, from what little I saw of her."

Harry looked firmly down at his porridge, watching it swim in his vision. His heart felt very big and heavy. Mrs Weasley... _dead_. And Ginny... What was Voldemort getting at? "Well, if there's - any way you could find out about her..." It stung his mouth to ask Voldemort for anything, but Harry needed to know. "Please, I - don't need anything else from you... Just to know if she's all right..."

"If Miss Weasley is still alive I imagine she would wish to avoid my notice as much as possible. Nevertheless, I shall inform you should anything come to my notice. How strange to think that my diary possessed the girl once - I felt so sure the daughter was the one named Molly - imagine if the Horcrux had succeeded..." he mused softly, livid eyes staring past Harry into the distance. "I wonder, would I have killed him or locked him up as I must with you..."

Harry briefly imagined being locked in a room for five months with the young Tom Riddle from the diary. He couldn't decide if it would be better or worse than being locked in a room with Lord Voldemort. At least he didn't find Voldemort handsome, right? Harry looked up at Riddle, frowning and finding it very hard to believe that they had been the same person once.

And now he had been thinking much too long about this.

"Thank you," he muttered, glancing away and smothering the sharp spike of bitterness at having to thank Voldemort for anything in this ludicrous situation. But it was just for Ginny. Once he knew that she was all right, Harry wouldn't need anything else from him. Sullenly, he set aside the heavy, empty bowl; he had finished his porridge without even realizing it.

Voldemort nodded stiffly and stood, vanishing the bowl. "I shall return tomorrow at the same hour." And, with that, he disapparated with a smooth ripple of magic.

* * *

He stared into the dancing flames: hypnotic almost-shapes coiled within the leaping fire in sacred communion with fate, a pyromantic prophecy unfurling before Lord Voldemort's avid gaze. _Victory,_ the fire hissed, spat, and whispered, _the boy will die by your hand and you shall triumph._ But suddenly the oracle was a pyre engulfing his childhood wardrobe and he was a boy again, howling in shock and rage as all of his Horcruxes screamed, trapped within. He banged his fists against the door, but it would not open, and now pain licked up his arms and he too screamed...

Voldemort awoke to cloying fear that choked his insides and, instinctively, he reached for Nagini only for his hands to brush against empty silk. He flinched and curled into himself. _Nagini..._

He stood abruptly, throwing on a new pair of robes and a cloak, and leaving his secluded home for the cities of his dominion. He cursed, hunted, and killed. He drowned his fears in blood and exhilaration, threads of thought unravelling in vicious delirium.

_No harm must come to his dear Nagini._ She must remain close now, no longer sent to do his bidding... He had concealed her in a far-away place, how happy she would be to see her master once more.

She lay coiled upon the bed, her soft, sleeping breaths almost sighs. He caressed her scales with crimson-dipped fingers, consumed by relief that his treasured serpent was safe. She, his faithful companion in immortality, could never die. Such a notion was absurd.

* * *

In this space empty of daylight and time, the days bled into each other, one long, endless blur of monotony. Nothing changed here. The pitcher of water on the nightstand refilled itself magically whenever it got too low; the chamber pot beneath his bed magically emptied itself whenever Harry used it. There were no windows, no ways for him to distinguish the time of day; the only indication of the passage of time were Voldemort's daily visits, in which Harry would begrudgingly force down a plate of food and Riddle would make strained conversation with him. Harry slept intermittently and often, for there was not much else for him to do and no clock to tell him when it was appropriate for him to be awake.

The enchanted candles floating in the corners of the room sensed when Harry wanted to sleep, dimming and lighting according to his state of activity. Which was why, when he awoke in the middle of a particularly good stretch of sleep to the sensation of fingers stroking his back, the room was still completely dark.

His first thought, absurdly, was that it was Ginny. He'd been dreaming about her a lot these days, as the walls seemed to get smaller and smaller around him. The life he would have had. Harry kept his eyes firmly shut, grasping loosely at the tail of the retreating dream, trying to will himself to stay asleep. He focused on the thought of her long, slender fingers running across his shoulders - but no, he frowned. That wasn't right. Her hands had always been so small when he'd held them. Harry tried to correct this in his imagination - but then the sharp edge of a nail scraped against his bare neck, and Harry's eyes flew open.

Ginny wasn't here, in his imagination or otherwise - and he definitely wasn't dreaming.

Heart racing, Harry dared a glance over his shoulder, the breath still in his lungs with horror. And there was Lord Voldemort, a deranged look on his face in the dim light, touching Harry's back, of all things. He felt himself go completely stiff. "Er... what do you think you're doing?"

Voldemort said nothing, his crimson eyes glowing blankly in the gloom, and there was a faint smile on those horrible, thin lips. The fingers moved to Harry's arm, brushing across hairs standing on end.

Harry yanked himself away before he could stop himself, flustered and disturbed. "Hey! Cut it out!"

The Dark Lord looked up suddenly, his hand grasping empty air, glancing about himself as though lost. He patted the bed where Harry had been, as if expecting something to be there. The pale hands were spattered with something that looked suspiciously like blood. "Where is she?" Voldemort hissed at him. He seemed childish and unsure, nothing like the superior git Harry was used to.

"Where is who?" _Was he talking about Bellatrix?_

"She was here," Voldemort murmured, still casting about as though he expected to find anyone except Harry in this prison, and wiping what was Harry was now pretty sure _was_ blood onto the covers. "She would not leave without my permission."

"There's no one else here," Harry said slowly, with growing bewilderment and alarm. "Just me, Harry."

The livid eyes glared, "I am no fool, Potter! You have taken her from me, _you_ - you... have..." the words petered out into a chilly whisper and the slit-pupilled eyes met Harry's gaze and then looked quickly away, "I... I shall leave you to your rest."

Harry edged carefully to the other side of the bed. For the first time in many days, Voldemort was frightening him. "You think you can just - wake me up in the middle of the night and not explain yourself?"

The glittering, feral eyes blinked across at him. "It was not my intention to disturb your rest. I... I was looking for someone and I..." Voldemort glanced down at the red smeared across his white digits, "It matters little, I assure you."

Harry stared. "Who would _you_ be looking for?"

"That is hardly your concern," Voldemort replied coldly, but Harry could hear the edge of hurt in that soft voice. The Dark Lord was rattled.

"It's the snake," said Harry suddenly. "You were looking for your snake. You thought I was... oh, _god._.." A flush spread up that almost translucent skin as though Voldemort's gaunt cheeks were blue with bruising. "Well, if that could just - never happen again... right..."

"I..." Voldemort was avoiding his eyes again.

"She's really dead then, isn't she?" said Harry, watching him carefully.

"Do you imagine I would be seeking her out in such strange places as this if my dear one were not-? That is why you must be locked away, Harry Potter. Because you are the last. I was flush with victory, careless..."

_The last._ Harry felt any hope of ever escaping this place drain away. He was the only piece of soul Voldemort had left. There was no way Riddle would ever allow him to escape. Harry swallowed down sudden fury, felt it hit his stomach like a heavy rock. "Who did it?"

"What does it matter? They are as dead as my precious one now." Voldemort rubbed his skeletal hands together, his snake-like nostrils widening as though inhaling the scent of blood. It seemed to calm him.

"But not before they got to your snake," Harry said with bitter glee, unable to help himself. It had been Neville - he was suddenly sure of it. "Killing them didn't bring her back, did it? How did that feel, Riddle? To watch someone murder something so close to you?"

Voldemort shrieked and nails sunk into Harry's face and then ripped viciously down his cheek, digging flesh away. The crimson eyes were bright with rage. Harry cried out, blood pouring down the side of his face, and he swung wildly in the dark at Voldemort. His closed fist connected solidly with a sharp cheekbone, shooting pain up his knuckles. The serpentine wizard hissed in distress and recoiled from the blow into a predatory crouch at the edge of the bed, baring his clenched teeth. Harry had always thought the Dark Lord's teeth would be crooked and yellowed like Snape's, but they were just as long, pale, and inhuman as the rest of Voldemort's features. It took him a moment to realise that the furious red eyes were blinking away tears.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" There was still blood dripping down Harry's face, but the sting in his cheek was worth the satisfaction of seeing Lord Voldemort this way. "Knowing you'll never be able to see her again? That she's gone forever?"

"You are unworthy to speak of her! She and I were one! We coiled and hunted together - drank of each other's thoughts! The chosen companion of Lord Voldemort to bear his soul and share in his immortality!" Voldemort's unguarded thoughts transformed the giant, murderous, man-eating snake into a lovely creature curled in his lap or sharing trust in the dark, wound together in affectionate coils; her yellow, slit-pupilled eyes always open while his red ones were closed. "And, instead of my beautiful Nagini, I am left with a stubborn, obstreperous _child_ who - who loathes me - and, in a moment of cruel delirium, I thought you dead and her returned..." he faltered. _My only precious one, my dear friend..._

"Well, she's dead," said Harry viciously, pulling away from Voldemort's disturbingly tender thoughts about that awful creature, "and you're stuck with me now, and it's all your own fault."

"I was distracted... I did not protect her..."

"That's right," said Harry, even as his heart contracted at the memory of Ron and Hermione, dead - the poisonous thoughts that had been haunting his endless hours in this claustrophobic room. Harry hadn't been able to protect them, either... "That's right..." he repeated, his own self-loathing creeping into his shaking voice, "You could have stopped it if you'd stopped to think about anyone but yourself for one bloody moment..." He looked back at Voldemort, eyes hardening. "Well, I hope it was worth it, Riddle. I hope your immortality was worth all the lives you destroyed along the way. Because you're going to be paying for it for the rest of eternity."

"That is not my name!" Riddle spat. "And it is not a question of worth, it is a necessity. Why any witch or wizard should simply allow themselves to die when they have the means to prevent it is beyond my understanding."

"Because this is the price," Harry shot back at him, snarling. "You did this to yourself - _you_ sacrificed your precious snake. _You_ made me into your Horcrux. You're all alone and your soul is all but destroyed - and you don't even have the comfort of knowing that your long, miserable existence is going to end one day. I don't know about you, but death doesn't sound too bad compared to all that."

"You are quite right," Voldemort said quietly, "you do not know about me. Yes, I am alone, and my safeguards are in tatters, but I have endured worse. I have my power, my mind is intact, and I can feel the bruise blossoming on my cheek - I can see, hear, and speak - and I rule Wizarding Britain. I shall miss Nagini, but such cruelty is the stuff of life. It goes on and we with it."

Harry laughed. He couldn't help it. "You're incredible," he said, shaking his head and wiping some of the blood off his face. "You mean to tell me you'd honestly rather be alone, and miserable, and delusional for the rest of eternity - than dead?"

"We are all alone," Voldemort scoffed, "and there is nothing worse than death, Potter."

"You know what I think? I think you're just scared of it."

"You believe that I am too proud to admit my fear? I am not. I feared death so I strived to achieve immortality. Bravery is not merely the act of flinging yourself into the abyss, it is also having the courage - every single day - to endure the unendurable."

"Bravery isn't about running away from your fears," Harry said. "It's about accepting them. And I think I've got plenty of it, thanks, seeing as I'm being forced to endure _you."_

Voldemort sighed, "I did not mean to suggest that you are not brave, Potter. I have long acknowledged and admired this quality in you. I was merely pointing out that - ah, never mind." The Dark Lord shook his head.

Harry did not press him. Swallowing his frustration, Harry scowled and dabbed at the scratches on his face with his robe, watching the blood vanish magically from the cloth. He thought distantly that Ron would benefit greatly from some self-cleaning robes - and then he remembered that Ron was dead.

Suddenly, there was an itchy heat against where Voldemort's nails had gauged and then skin began to heal back together. The Dark Lord stood by the side of the bed, expressionless, wand outstretched as he healed the wounds he had caused. Harry's chest tightened; he suddenly wanted to look anywhere in the room but at Riddle.

"Why are you acting like this?" he blurted out. "Giving me books... healing me... Why aren't you trying to make this as horrible as possible? It shouldn't make any difference to you, as long as I'm still alive."

Voldemort regarded him thoughtfully, his eyes still strangely empty. "It does not make any difference to me, but it would seem to make a great deal of difference to you."

"Because you care so much about what makes a difference to me," Harry said incredulously.

"I can cease to do so, if it causes you such consternation," Voldemort drew his wand away from Harry's only half-healed cheek.

Harry scowled. "Pardon me for being confused. You've been so kind to me in the past - I don't know why I would find it strange."

Riddle began to pace the small room, as though collecting his thoughts. "I have endured years of enforced isolation in my life, Potter. I therefore have some sympathy with your predicament. But, more than any other concern, you are my Horcrux - a part of Lord Voldemort - and it is my responsibility to care for your needs. I promise you I am not so monstrous as I appear. Treat me with courtesy and I shall offer you the same consideration."

Harry stared at him, trying to make out his expression in the dim light. Was this some sort of trick? Perhaps Voldemort was only offering him this so that he could yank it away when he wanted Harry to cooperate. Harry had said himself, after all, that Voldemort had nothing left to hang over his head.

"Constant strife will please neither of us," Voldemort went on. "You are at my mercy, I have no cause to deceive you. We shall be in this situation for an extremely long time and I simply do not see how treating you poorly would benefit me."

"Oh, I dunno - maybe because you're _evil_?" It had to be a trick. There was no other explanation. This was exactly what Voldemort was trying to do - act all kind and reasonable so that, when he next sunk his claws into Harry's face, it would be all the more painful.

"Evil?" The most evil Dark Lord in history frowned, as though confused by the idea.

"Yeah, evil. You know - murdering babies... feeding live humans to your snake... getting your jollies from torturing people..."

"I had never considered it in that light," Voldemort said simply, "I believe in neither good nor evil. They are mere ideas created to shield the minds of the powerless. I do not act to no purpose, Potter. I end those who resist me. I punish those who displease me. And why should anyone inhume or burn corpses when an animal requires sustenance and a source of meat is readily available?"

"Because it's the decent thing to do?" Harry stared at him, trying to figure out if he was joking. "It's great that you think you have some great plan to justify all the horrible things you do, but when your plan is evil, I don't think it really counts. And killing people is evil," he added quickly. "Torturing people is evil. Flattening the entire world so that you can simply get what you want is evil, no matter which way you look at it."

"I disagree," Riddle said mildly, as though they were discussing which Quidditch side would win the cup this year. "Nature is murder. Small creatures killing those even smaller than themselves, others picking over the remains, and blood and bone sinking into the earth to feed the greedy roots of trees..."

Harry unconsciously inched backward on the bed, away from Voldemort, who was now standing beside it. "Most people would say that's what separates us from animals. What makes us superior. We don't need to kill each other for food, or survival, do we? We're, y'know... civilized."

"Our superiority over mere animals has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with our ability to rule over them. Humans are rational. Why should they fight unless it is necessary? Why should they hunt each other if their diets are amply supplied by weaker, less intelligent creatures who are easier to subdue, by far?"

"Our opinions might differ a bit on what constitutes necessary," Harry said dryly. "I s'pose all that blood on your hands right now - whoever you were roughing up before you came here - that was all necessary, right?"

"No," Voldemort murmured softly, an eerie, distant look crossing his glowing red eyes, "I was dreaming strange dreams and what seemed, in that moment, to be a cure only dragged me deeper under such unsettling currents... the weak, in the end, are little but fodder..."

"Er... right..." Harry frowned, not eager for Voldemort to fall back into that weird trance again. "Well, if you could just remember next time that I'm not your dead snake... that would be great..."

"I will endeavour to remember," Riddle remarked dryly. "Ah, before I depart, I discovered the fate of your Weasley girl."

Ginny. Harry's heart lurched and quickened. "Oh?" he said, as casually as he could. He'd thought Voldemort had forgotten about her; it'd been at least a week since Harry had first asked, and Voldemort hadn't given any indication that he'd been doing anything about it since.

"This is only a rumor, you understand. I am by no means certain of its veracity."

His entire body was completely tense. He could hardly breathe. "Right. Of course."

"I have heard that Miss Weasley fled to France to stay with her sister-in-law's family, the Delacours, in Paris."

"Paris." Harry seemed to visibly deflate with relief. She was safe. But something nagged in the back of his thoughts, some vague and unexpected sense of betrayal. Could Ginny really have simply given up and run away? Harry had been so certain that she would still be fighting... that she would be looking for him... "And it's - from a reliable source, is it?"

"I am certain he was not lying. All agree that Miss Weasley left soon after the battle and my servant insists that he saw her there with Gabrielle Delacour, but he may have been mistaken."

Harry felt very far away from his dark prison; his mind was in France with Ginny. She'd always wanted to travel. And, most importantly, she would be safe there. Voldemort hadn't been interested in taking over the rest of Europe, had he? It would make sense for her to go there; she could start a new life and forget about all the horrors that had happened to her and her family.

And still, Harry couldn't banish the niggling sensation that she had deceived him somehow, that she'd broken his trust in her...

"Thanks," he heard himself say, looking past Voldemort at the unyielding stone walls which delineated his existence.

The Dark Lord nodded and retreated from him - a white mask on a black-draped pole - fading away like a ghost. Harry could not fall back asleep. He was left alone with a thousand heart-aching memories of Ginny and the bittersweet knowledge that she was off somewhere, right now, starting a new beginning - safe and happy and without him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter III**

* * *

Voldemort slipped for the vortex of twisting magic, bearing - in a shrunken box - the pick of a winter feast: stuffed, honeyed meats, hot, buttery soup stoppered with a lid, crunch-skinned, over-sourced, roasted vegetables, dark, fragrant bread, and a slice of sugary tart that looked as though its goal was to bind together the teeth of its victims, attended by dollops of cream and custard.

He ate little, by habit, and certainly never such rich fair as this. Voldemort had not wished to insult his hostess, however, and asked if he might take some away with him - thinking of his Horcrux. She, relishing the chance to impress the Dark Lord, had laden him down with the best of her table, preserved by some impressive charmwork.

"Potter," he acknowledged. The boy was lounging atop the coverlet, a thick text open in his lap. He jerked to attention as he always did whenever Voldemort appeared, all the ease draining from his posture as he was filled with the tension of prey.

"Er... hello."

Voldemort took the package out of the inner pocket of his thick cloak and returned it to its proper size. It was as big as a boot box, neatly wrapped in grease-proof paper and a ribbon of twine. His subjects seemed so determined to flatter him with gifts he did not need. At least Potter might appreciate such largesse. "I apologize for my lateness," he said - not meaning it - as he passed the heavy package to the boy. "The days seem to grow busier as they shorten."

Potter stared at the box. "It's not like I've got any way to tell," he said distractedly, "You... er... you got me a present? Wow. Thank you."

"Not exactly," he explained, "I was having dinner at the home of one of my Death Eaters and his wife seemed to take offense at my gaunt figure. I appeased her by agreeing to take my portion with me."

Potter's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Is something wrong with it?"

"Of course not," Voldemort sniffed, "I simply thought to take advantage of her insistence to feed you and silence her anxiety concerning my abstinence."

"You don't eat much, do you?" Potter paused, chewing his lip, and then, in a rush of words: "How come you never eat here with me? I mean," he added quickly, "it's a bit unnerving, you know, trying to eat an entire meal with someone just... staring at you like that..."

"In your case, I do it to assure myself that you do not throw your victuals away and starve yourself, still... unnerving, you say?" Voldemort laughed, "That explains much about the behaviour of my fellow guests at dinner."

"Go to a lot of parties in your spare time?" There was a hint of bitterness in Potter's voice as he tugged at the ribbon, carefully peeling away the wrapping paper.

"No," Voldemort confessed, "nor do I enjoy them, particularly. A room full of fearful witches and wizards eating and drinking too much, becoming ridiculous in their intoxication, just at the time I would prefer to be at home working on my spellbooks. We are, all of us, relieved when I depart."

"At least you get to see other people," Potter muttered, and then faltered. He had lifted up the lid of the box; any trace of scorn vanished from his face, replaced by naked shock. "Woah. Blimey... This is - is this all for me?"

"She may have been trying to impress me," Voldemort said, confronted once again with all the delicious, futile aromas of an hour before. "I suppose you might eat it over several days."

Potter looked back at him in bewilderment. "You don't want any of it? There's enough here for five people… surely you could take some with you…"

"I do not eat, Potter," Voldemort snapped, irritated. "Occasionally, I may drink a little tea or a glass of wine, but this body is not sustained by common means." Once, every season, he would journey to the Forbidden Forest of his youth and hunt a silver unicorn by moonlight.

Potter's face went very pale. "You're not some kind of - vampire or something, are you?"

"Do not be ridiculous," Voldemort scoffed, "the magic involved is completely different."

Potter opened his mouth and then closed it again. "Right. You know what - I don't want to know." He laid the box in front of him and then, without touching the food inside, looked back at the Dark Lord again, suddenly uncertain.

"Ah," Voldemort nodded to himself and took a step back. Potter found it unnerving when the Dark Lord watched him eat. "I will leave you to enjoy your meal in peace."

"No," Potter blurted out, "it's not that. I actually thought you might… sit down for a while. Instead of just, y'know, standing there. If you're not hungry, maybe you could just… have some tea?"

He did not know what to make of the invitation. Voldemort narrowed his eyes, trying to guess at the boy's motives, fearing he was being mocked. "I think not," he said loftily, uncertain, and expecting the fast return of Potter's usual insults.

An odd look passed over the boy's face, and then he scowled. "So you'll go to insufferable dinner parties but you can't spare me your company for a few minutes?"

He sighed, loathing that he felt obliged to justify his behaviour to anyone, let alone Harry Potter. "It is rather than I have just been to an extremely long, insufferable dinner party and have neither the desire, nor the patience, to sit here and endure your demands and insults. I hope you enjoy your dinner, but I simply wish to be alone."

Potter's face clouded over with outrage. He looked like he had much to say, but his mouth simply settled into a thin line. "Fine," he said tightly. "Thanks for the gift." He clearly meant this as a gibe, though Voldemort could not see how.

It left him at a loss for how to respond, so he said nothing at all and returned himself to his own dwelling, many, many miles away.

* * *

Harry spent most of the next day pacing around the walls of his claustrophobic prison in a towering fury. He hadn't eaten most of the feast Voldemort had brought him out of spite - although he hadn't been able to resist the slice of treacle tart. He hadn't had any treacle tart since he'd last been at Hogwarts, at the end of his sixth year. That seemed like a hundred years ago now.

He didn't know what to do. He was beginning to go mad. Every day was exactly the same, without even the luxury of a clock or a calendar so that Harry could keep track of his imprisonment. He was starting to feel like a ghost, uncertain of his own skin. The loneliness was crushing. The room did not even look like anyone lived there; Harry was completely unable to change anything inside of it. He'd spent several hours one day sitting on his bed, emptying the water pitcher onto the floor - just to watch it fill back up again, the puddle he'd made simply melting away. As though it had never been there to begin with.

As though he didn't even exist.

He plotted obsessively. He felt every inch of the walls and the floor with his hands, searching for a weakness, an invisible doorknob, anything at all. His second day of captivity, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to attack Voldemort as soon as he'd appeared; he'd gotten an agonizing dose of the Cruciatus Curse for his efforts. In the following days, he'd spent hours and hours trying to cast wandless spells, to Apparate, to make anything happen at all. But Voldemort must have put some kind of seal on his magic, because no matter how hard Harry tried, he couldn't find the spark within him. For all he knew, he'd been turned into a Squib during the battle; it was as though all the magic had been sucked straight out of him.

He was going mad. The only thing anchoring him to reality, ironically enough, were Voldemort's visits. Unpleasant as they were, it was the only time that Harry felt as though he had a tangible presence in this strange, timeless space. He spoke, and Voldemort responded; it wasn't much, but it was enough to keep him from losing it altogether.

He could see that it was time to go about this in a different way. He wasn't getting anywhere with his magic, and it was clear that there was no one out there looking for him. There was only one person who could get Harry out of this room, and that was Lord Voldemort. Which was why, when Riddle arrived the next day, Harry was ready and waiting for him.

Voldemort didn't even Apparate like normal people. It was almost soundless: a smooth transfiguration from air into person. Long fingers placed what looked like a flask of pumpkin juice on the sideboard. The red eyes were darkly livid, gleaming with rage, but then he blinked and the emotion was gone. "I have brought you some juice to make a change from water," he said in that cold, horrible voice, stating the obvious. "I did not think you would require feeding."

"Thanks," Harry said politely, biting back his anger at being treated like an animal. Feeding. "How are you today?"

A low noise came from the back of Riddle's throat, ending in a drawn-out hiss. He shook his head and drummed his long nails on the polished wood of the sideboard. "Because you care so much about how I feel," he spat Harry's own words back at him.

With great restraint, Harry kept his temper at a reasonable level. "Sorry," he said with exaggerated courtesy, "you just seem a little… uptight."

"Uptight…" Riddle echoed Harry, wrapping his forked tongue around the word. "Uptight… as though I were a bow strung taut with fury. Yes. Yes. Would you consider it an imposition if I took a sip of your water?"

As if he had a choice. "Go ahead, I've got plenty," Harry said lightly.

The Dark Lord did not conjure himself a glass as Harry expected, but poured a splash onto his hand and drank from his palm, smoothing the residue slowly across his pale face. "You have Lord Voldemort's thanks," he said when finished.

"Right…" Harry shifted uncomfortably. Voldemort looked to have calmed down a little, but his flat serpent's face had a false, mask-like quality. Harry was beginning to regret having asked him to stay.

"Forgive my manners," Riddle sighed, "I have been dealing with the mistakes of fools all day."

Harry was sorely tempted to point out that just one of Voldemort's mistakes had ruined Harry's entire life, but he bit his tongue. "Why should that matter?" he said conversationally. "I thought you just killed everyone who gets in your way."

"Oh, I killed one of them to serve as an example to the rest, but if I resorted to the Killing Curse whenever faced with stupidity, I would have almost no one over which to rule."

"Er…" Harry blinked. He hadn't expected Riddle to be so honest. "Right. But surely the others weren't quite so - um - stupid after that?"

"I have my doubts, but I am hopeful that they will no longer assault and torture persons in my name - with whom I have no quarrel - as a way of resolving their own greed, inferiorities and petty concerns."

"Hang on. You're angry _because_ people are getting tortured?"

The red eyes flashed, "My servants represent me in all their dealing with my subjects! I do not give them leave to force themselves on young witches, steal the possessions of others, or place the Dark Mark above the homes of those loyal to Lord Voldemort!"

"So those things are only all right when you do them," said Harry.

"I kill my enemies. Killing those who do not resist me, or allowing my servants to do so, is both wasteful and foolish."

"Maybe you'd have better luck if your servants weren't a bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics," Harry said casually. For the first time, Riddle smiled at him. The thin, colourless mouth stretched into a wide grin and he gave a wry half-laugh. Harry felt unexpectedly pleased with himself. It had been a long time since he'd made anyone laugh.

"Perhaps… if _I_ were not one of said lunatics thirsting for blood, is that what you are saying?" He laughed again, cold and high, but he did not look angry - the opposite, in fact.

"Well… er…"

The bright, feline eyes slid him a sly look of teasing amusement, "And why not? There is nothing quite so lovely as the sheen of blood under the pale light of the moon… as prancing in naked bacchanal around corpses bathed in lunar rays…" Voldemort gave a heavy, theatrical sigh and laughed again, grinning madly.

Harry forced a nervous laugh, even though Voldemort was seriously starting to freak him out. "Can't say I've had the pleasure."

"Oh, it is splendid, especially in summer, when the mood takes you, and you feel the urge to dance and ululate in the small hours of the morning."

Was Voldemort making fun of him? Eventually, the Dark Lord stopped chuckling and noticed Harry's expression.

"I will not bite," he said softly, and then gave a small, hissy snigger.

"No, I reckon your nails get the job done well enough."

Riddle's amusement dulled a little, but he didn't seem to take offense. "And look at yourself Harry, a regular boxer."

He snorted. "Well, I was absolute rubbish at duelling you, wasn't I? Had to learn how to defend myself somehow."

"You have clearly found your calling," Voldemort said teasingly, "I did not remember to heal it before I slept that night, and I awoke to a cheek the most fascinating shades of purple and yellow."

Harry grinned despite himself. "You've just got to let me have a go at these Death Eaters and they won't give you any more trouble."

"Oh, you would enjoy that, would you not, Potter?" Riddle grinned back. "But you see, they are _my_ Death Eaters." His voice became a mockery of a petulant child, "Only I get to play with them. If you want peons to abuse you will have to find your own."

"Well, I s'pose you're my peon, in a way," Harry said slyly, before he could stop himself, "bringing me food every night and all that."

"Well…" Voldemort said, and for a moment Harry thought it was over and he was about to find himself at the end of a curse, "I have always been rather self-serving."

It took Harry a second to realize what he was talking about, and then he scowled. "Oh, very funny."

"I thought so," Riddle said, smug as hell, and turned around to pour two glasses of pumpkin juice from the bottle he had brought, "here…" he offered one to him. After a moment of hesitation, Harry slid over on the bed, making room for Voldemort to sit. He was Harry's only way out of this room, after all - and Harry would never get out of here if Riddle only hung around as long as he needed to every day. And besides, it had been so long since Harry had last talked to someone. He felt that small, persistent voice - _you don't matter, you're dead now_ - ease its grip on his mind.

"D'you maybe want to - stay for a while?" He only needed to fake half the sincerity in the question.

Voldemort gazed at the empty space beside Harry, taking a sip of pumpkin juice and tilting his head in consideration. He looked confused, as though no one had ever asked him such a thing before. "I have been careful," he said eventually, "not to intrude upon your person."

"Aside from locking me in here all alone for months on end, you mean." Harry looked away, gritting his teeth. "Sorry. It's just - difficult, being confined in one tiny, windowless room, with no one to talk to… Sometimes I feel like I'm going a bit mad, you see," he added with a harsh laugh.

Riddle moved to the bed and sat down next to Harry, a strange sadness in his crimson gaze. Long fingers brushed up the back of his neck and carded gently through his hair; Harry tensed in surprise but did not pull away. "And you forget the sound of voices, as the passage of time erodes into circular thought, what you were before dissolves even in memory, and you cry out merely to assure yourself of your continued existence…"

Harry glanced at him sharply, the strange comfort of those fingers momentarily forgotten. "You've been locked up before?"

"It was never being locked up so much as being locked out. I was removed from all that I knew: my hands, my voice, my magic, every certainty I had ever possessed was stripped away and then, as the years passed, the only thing which remained was my determination to endure long enough that so that, somehow, someone would seek me out and rescue me. I have never been so desirous of another in all my life."

"Then why would you trap me here? Are you _trying_ to drive me mad?" He hated how his voice shook, engulfed by sudden fear.

But something in the Dark Lord's face broke in that moment. Riddle was clearly appalled by his words, and he suddenly seemed too young for his gaunt, hideous face: a small, frightened child in an adult's body. "I… such was never my intention." Long, skeletal fingers stopped just short of Harry, clutching the air. "I have to keep you safe. I cannot let you go."

"You can't keep me here," said Harry, fighting with the desperation in his voice, his chest very tight - but the words wouldn't stop now that he'd started, now that someone was listening - "I can't even tell if it's night or day - it's like I'm drowning in a lake, and I can't figure out which way is up… I walk around with nowhere to go, and when I sleep I can't tell if it's just been for a few minutes or for - for _days_… I'm… beginning to hear things, I think..."

Thin, bony arms suddenly pulled him into a tight embrace, so close he could feel Voldemort's ribs jutting into him through their clothes. A hand stroked his hair and a hollow cheek pressed against his own. "You will not go mad," Voldemort whispered, "I promise you, Potter, I will not let you go mad."

Harry swallowed harshly, squeezing shut his eyes. It was just proof of how close he was to losing it, that Lord Voldemort's arms around him could bring him any form of comfort. "You can't keep me here," he repeated hoarsely, full of shame and self-loathing, "please…"

"I… I must…" Riddle gasped out in a terrified rush, thin chest heaving, "someone will see you, or you will escape, and you are all I have left - six Horcruxes and you - you are all I have left…"

Harry ripped himself away. A penetrating sense of despair plunged over him. "I had my entire life ahead of me! And now all I've got is this bloody room - and I swear it's getting smaller every minute, I can feel it! You can't keep me here! I'll - I'll -" He could feel himself rapidly losing control of the situation; his hysteria was spiralling within him, now that he was faced with the certainty of it all, watching his last hope slipping from his grasp, "I'll dash myself to pieces!"

"You will not!" Voldemort hissed furiously, leaping to his feet, towering over Harry. "I have bewitched this place to alert Lord Voldemort should you attempt such a thing and, by the time I finished with you, you would be begging for death!" But then his anger seemed to lessen and his voice became soft and tentative. "Perhaps I could… let you out under close supervision, on occasion…"

Harry's breath caught in his throat. He was ashamed of how pathetically eager he felt, hope fluttering madly in his chest. "I…" He didn't know what to say. There was no backhanded remark, no spiteful words that could shield how desperately he had yearned for this opportunity. "Anything. Please... I just…" His voice was very small. "I can't live like this…"

"Take my hand, Potter," Voldemort held out a bony claw and Harry's heart seemed to stop. Slowly, as though he thought Voldemort might yank away at any moment, Harry slipped his smaller fingers into Riddle's long, white ones.

And he was falling through a whirling of magic and then into a dark, starry sky. They wrapped around him, glittering in the blackness, and he was flying - flying beside Lord Voldemort through a vast, clear, empty night, encased in a bright cage of stars that had once held Nagini.

He sucked in huge gulps of cool, fresh air, eyes streaming in the sharp wind. There was a bubble of hysterical laughter and several exhilarated heartbeats before Harry realized it was coming from his own mouth. He'd forgotten what the wind felt like - what it was like to look up and see nothing but the sky, stretching on and on for eternity - as Voldemort spun and dived, flying faster than any broom, his hand still clutching Harry's.

Eventually, Riddle set him down, letting go of his hand in the long grass atop a high hill looking out over fields far below and the distant lights of a city, but his feet did not touch the grass. He floated in Voldemort's cage as though underwater.

Harry looked out at the world through the thin veil of magic, struck by sudden sadness. _You're_ _dead_, that voice whispered to him again, and it certainly felt that way. Things had moved on without him. People were continuing to live their lives - he thought, with slight bitterness, of Ginny - and it didn't make one bit of difference to them whether Harry moved among them or not.

He tore his eyes from the twinkling skyline in the distance and looked over at Voldemort. "Let me out," he said softly. "I won't run away, I swear."

"I…" he could hear Voldemort's thoughts as clearly as if the man had spoken them aloud: _I let her out, I let her out for one moment, thinking her safe... _

"There isn't anyone else here," Harry pleaded. "No one's going to attack me, we're completely alone, please, I - I'd just like to - walk around, for a bit…"

Voldemort regarded him carefully, his pale, pensive face pearly in the moonlight. "And you will not run?"

Harry's stomach clenched. This was his opportunity… but how far would he get on this empty hillside with nowhere to hide? How far, before Voldemort caught him and never let him outside ever again? No, now was not the time to try to run… "I won't."

"Very well," Voldemort gestured and the cage suddenly vanished as Harry's bare feet hit the soft earth and he was free.

Another frightening, broken laugh escaped him. He knew how he must sound - _mad, you're going mad_ - but he couldn't find it in himself to care. There was long, tickling grass between his toes, and a cold winter breeze swept over him, washing his arms in goose bumps... but it was so nice to feel, to be anywhere that wasn't that room with its stagnant air and unchanging walls...

He bent down to the ground and pressed his fingers into it, smelling the dirt. He wanted more than anything to run around, simply to get his heavy limbs moving again, but he knew Voldemort wouldn't allow it. The moment's impermanence hung over him more effectively than any magical cage; Harry was unable to shake the lingering sadness that had descended upon him as he gazed out on the distant city.

"It's strange, how nothing changes," he said quietly. "I feel like the world's stopped sometimes... it's hard to imagine everything going on as usual, while you're..." He faltered and shut his eyes, trying not to think of Ginny, trying to think of nothing but the air and the grass and the sky and this fleeting moment of freedom.

"If there is one thing I have learned," Voldemort mused, staring up at the constellations, "it is that change is the only constant in the universe." Robes rippling in the cold wind, Riddle's gaze lingered on the moon, almost in accusation. Then he turned abruptly to Harry, as though suddenly remembering he was talking to another person. "Oh, run about if you wish. But stray too far and I shall give chase and that you will not find so enjoyable." The red eyes gleamed in cruel warning.

* * *

But Potter did not run. He walked slowly across the wide field, in silent rejection of Voldemort's dismissive offer. The Dark Lord watched him carefully, fingers itching to sweep the stubborn boy back under the protection of his magic. Potter sat and stretched out in the long grass, perhaps contemplating his strange destiny. He ought to be grateful to be Lord Voldemort's Horcrux when the alternative had been death in that silent, firelit clearing. Potter would never have revealed so much to him had he not desired to live.

How strange it was to think that the child he blamed for his long years of exile was now in fear of that same, slow degeneration of thought and feeling that had plagued Lord Voldemort. Yet the irony brought him no triumph. Rather, it made him want to comfort Potter – a mirror of his own past agonies. As though he might reach out and touch the hollowed-out, despairing creature - less than a ghost – who haunted a lonely forest for so many years, and whisper what dominion, what glories awaited him.

He glanced at Potter again: a sprawl of robe, wild hair, and grass. Well, if the boy had no desire to exercise, perhaps he would. Voldemort had not practised his duelling stances for a few days and it did not do to neglect such a thing. He had scant respect for the European styles of his youth, always too much the chivalrous duel, and extremely vulnerable to multiple opponents.

Voldemort preferred the more demanding forms of eastern warlocks; a deadly, shifting elegance with which British duellists could never compete. He stretched out, beginning with his hands, holding his wand as lightly as a quill, working his way through a series of feints before moving on to the more strenuous leaps and spins of the Fifteen Turns of the Hawk. Then, without allowing himself a moment to catch his breath – for no such opportunity was to be had in battle – he began the now-forbidden Shadow Dance. Or, as the cheerful, Australian wizard who had studied at the same dojo had described it: Six-Ways-To-Splinch-Yourself-Six-Ways-To-Sunday.

He rushed headlong into the movements, stepping in and out of the crushing, whirling darkness – faster and faster – until it he whirled with it – out and in and out and in, on a tide of furious, deadly force that might rip a less experienced wizard to pieces. And, once he had the smooth blink-blink-blink rhythm of racing, exhilarating apparition, he began the dance proper.

It spilled and curved like wind-whipped water: acrobatics that hit the vortex of apparition and kept going, spinning with deadly ease, to emerge a half-second later to complete the gesture; a dance with one's shadow, the darkness, and death. He rose off the ground, twisting the air into knots as he flung himself through the final forms mercilessly, imagining four opponents flinging deadly curses.

And then he slid out of the final move and he was done, descending slowly to the ground, panting with exertion and excitement and holding back the urge to expel the contents of his stomach. It had been too long.

Potter seemed to have forgotten all about the wonders of the universe above; he was staring at Voldemort instead. His mouth dangled open, face colourless in the pale blue light of the moon. "Are you… um... threatening me? Because, in case you haven't noticed, I'm just… sitting here. Y'know. _Not_ running away."

Voldemort returned the stare: he had not even considered the intimidating effect his exercises might have on Potter. He opened his mouth to answer the boy, to tell him that he had no need to threaten his Horcrux with such a display - and promptly threw up the what little pumpkin juice he had drunk earlier.

The boy continued to gape at him from his seat on the grass, and then he began to laugh. "Oh, wow, you'll have to work on that last bit… kind of ruins the effect, I'd say…"

"Advanced Apparition is strenuous, both physically and magically," The Dark Lord said, before adding, a little self-consciously, "and best practiced on an empty stomach. In truth, I merely sought a way to usefully pass the time. It does not do to neglect such things. A true warlock must seek to perfect his form every day without fail."

"Go on, rub it in," Potter said bitterly, looking away. "It's not like I'm wasting away in a stuffy room all day and night."

Voldemort raised his brows, "Why, did you practice regularly?"

Potter shut his eyes, looking as though he were making a great effort not to rise to the bait. "I play Quidditch. I get out on the pitch every single day. Used to, that is…"

"Quidditch," Voldemort repeated. "Well, it would hone your reflexes, if nothing else."

Potter eyes opened and he scowled. "Quidditch isjust as strenuous as duelling, and it requires just as much practice! Not just anyone can be a decent Quidditch player!"

"But it is hardly _useful_," Voldemort argued. "Perhaps it would aid in an airborne battle and allow swift escape, but there are far more effective ways to achieve such things. Besides," he added, as though it were the final, damning straw, "it is a _team_ sport."

"Of course it is," Potter frowned at him. "It wouldn't be any fun if you played it on your own, now, would it?"

"I prefer activities which do not require relying on the talents of lesser wizards," the Dark Lord sniffed.

Potter shrugged and looked back up at the sky. "Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It's about working together so that you become something greater than you could be on your own."

"And for that one has servants to achieve one's greater vision," Voldemort replied immediately.

Potter began to laugh. "Your servants are much too afraid of you to tell you when you're doing something wrong. And that's the whole point of teamwork, isn't it - to help each other be the best you can possibly be. How are you supposed to do that when you're afraid of being tortured for speaking your mind?"

"I am the greatest dark wizard alive," Voldemort snapped, furious at the suggestion that his servants ought to be encouraged to contradict him, "I teach my Death Eaters both fear and reverence for their lord, as is my right."

The young man lay back against the grass, folding his arms beneath his neck. "Have it your way. But you'll eventually get stuck in one place with that mind-set. Everyone's got weaknesses, and I s'pose you'll just never get past yours because you won't let anyone tell you what they are."

"You seem fairly willing," the Dark Lord remarked dryly.

Potter raised himself up on one elbow and gave him a sharp look. "And why should _I _want to help _you?"_

"We are speaking of _help? _I was merely pointing out that you enjoy discussing what you refer to as my weaknesses."

"I'd have a lot more to say if we were talking about those," said Potter smugly. "_I _was talking about Quidditch. Which you would probably be rubbish at, anyway… a victory doesn't really count if you've _Crucio'd _everyone to get it."

"You have seen me fly," Lord Voldemort was indignant - who did Potter think he was to lecture him in this way?

Potter settled himself back in the grass again. "Flying is only half of it."

"Ah yes. You have to be coordinated whilst still focusing on your own, most important objective: hunting the snitch," Voldemort treated Harry to a taut, wicked smile; the boy would be dead if it were not for their fraternal wands, when the Dark Lord had hunted him across the night sky.

"You've also got to be able to listen to your teammates," Potter informed him sagely. "Catching the snitch ends the game, after all - and if the other team is too far ahead while you're focused on chasing the snitch, you might end up losing - even if you catch it."

Voldemort's lipless mouth became a thin line of annoyance, "You take your allegory too far, Potter," he hissed.

"Allegory?" Potter rolled over and stared at him. "What are you on about?"

The Dark Lord peered at him suspiciously, "I have caught the snitch regardless of the other team's- I have _won_, Harry Potter, and you have lost!"

Potter gaped at him in sudden outrage. "Hang on! Am _I _supposed to be the snitch in this scenario?"

"Of course," Voldemort replied, "catching the snitch ends the game, is that not what you said?"

"I was talking about Quidditch!_" _Potter cried. "_That's_ what I said! God, I haven't been outside that room in five bloody months - d'you really need to spend the entire time reminding me how miserable I am?"

"You may recall that time was also devoted to descriptions of Lord Voldemort as staid, weak, and undoubtedly rubbish at Quidditch - that last being the only one to which I do not take offense."

"I am _nobody__'s_ snitch," Potter muttered angrily, and rolled over again to glare up at the stars.

The silence extended. Potter did not look at him again. Voldemort felt that he ought to fill the void and regain control of the situation, but he could not think how.

The answer, as ever, was magic.

* * *

Harry stared up at the sky and tried to pretend that Voldemort didn't exist. Leave it to Riddle to offer him a breath of fresh air - and then remind him at every possible moment of just how bleak his situation really was. He tried to focus instead on the small details of that moment - the hard earth beneath his head, the soft, wet grass under his fingers, how cool and sweet the air was against his face. Little things that he could recall later in the long, unending nightmare of his prison. He tried to count the stars - reminded himself that, for every one of the thousands glittering in the sky, there was another of a thousand suns, surrounded by millions of other planets, none of which Lord Voldemort would ever reach. This thought was very soothing to him.

One long, lean finger tapped him on the shoulder.

Harry squeezed shut his eyes in irritation, and then sat up calmly. "Yes?"

In Voldemort's outstretched palm was the most beautiful snitch Harry had ever seen. It seemed to be made of starlight rather than gold, its fast-beating wings delicate and glittering silver. "I did not mean to ruin your excursion," the Dark Lord said, holding it out to him, "here…"

Silently, Harry reached out and took it from him. Dark, velvety energy pulsed in his palm as shimmering wings stretched and fluttered. He realized that this was what Voldemort's magic must feel like - that Riddle had _made _this for him. A lump was forming in his throat; he did not know what to say. He felt inexplicably afraid and uncertain. Why was Voldemort offering him this? Would he truly be allowed to fly? "Thanks," he managed, tearing his gaze from the beautiful token of freedom in his fingers (magic, lovely magic, his first taste of it in many months) to blink, disconcerted, at his captor.

"I am pleased you like it," hissed the horrible, lipless mouth. "Now come, Potter." And the ground fell away beneath Harry's feet, sealed away by that same glistening, powerful magic, entrapped in a sphere of light, floating like Nagini or Dudley's ill-fated goldfish.

Panic swallowed him utterly. Flailing, he cried out, blind with sudden terror -_ not-again-not-again-not-again - _arms swinging and beating wildly at his cage; but the glittering walls of his prison leapt beyond his reach and he could do nothing but roll helplessly in the air, suspended above the ground. "_No!" _he shouted but his voice was muffled and the snitch, slipping from his grasp, began to bounce repeatedly against the ceiling of the sphere, "no, please, not yet - I can't go back yet - _let me out -!"_

"I regret it," Voldemort said softly, and with a flick of the Elder Wand they were back inside the agonisingly familiar walls of Harry's cell. But Riddle did not let him out of the orb of magic. Those merciless, slit-pupilled eyes stared at the cage thoughtfully - like Harry was an animal at the zoo - utterly unmoved by his pleas.

Harry fell still all at once, breathing harshly. Voldemort's travesty of a gift continued to ricochet relentlessly off the shimmering walls of the magical sphere, an ironic staccato that mirrored Harry's frantic heartbeat. His stomach was beginning to knot with nauseous fear; his hands shook so hard that he balled them into fists, but the tremble simply ran up his arms instead; his eyes, huge and hollow, couldn't stay still.

"Please," he said hoarsely, his voice tinny and far away as it struggled through thick magic. "Please. We're - we're back... you can let me out now, can't you?"

"I could," Voldemort murmured speculatively, predatory gaze flicking back and forth from Harry to the fluttering snitch, "but I do not think I will."

There was no air. "_NO!" _Harry tried to scream, "but _why -?!" _but barely anything was coming out; he was floating, helpless, completely out of control - and the thought that Voldemort might _leave him like this, _existing only within his own head, was enough to make sharp bile rise in his throat, his thoughts spinning and tearing away from his grasp. He was drowning, thrashing in the heavy, cold waters of the lake, going nowhere and feeling nothing - completely at the mercy of a total madman.

"You are _mine_, Harry Potter." Riddle hissed, "And, if on occasion you are so privileged to be released from the confines of this room, it will be at Lord Voldemort's sufferance. This orb, Potter, is not your enemy. You will _beg_ to be encased within it, to leave this room secure it its embrace. You will be obedient, and you will not complain when it is time to return. Do you understand?"

The world began to bleed. "_NO -!_" Kicking and screaming, he started thrashing violently again, forgetting in his panic that it was useless - his chest tight with such terror and helplessness as he had never known, "I WON'T - I _WON'T _- NOW _LET - ME - OUT!"_

_"You will," _came Voldemort's terrifying whisper, _"if you ever want to see daylight again." _

Utterly savage, Harry spat at Voldemort's leering face; his saliva sizzled and vanished in the Dark magic confining him before it could reach the Dark Lord. "_FUCK _YOU!" he shouted, swinging with all his strength at Voldemort and getting _nowhere, "_I'LL ROT IN THIS BLOODY PRISON FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE BEFORE I _EVER _CALL MYSELF YOURS!"

"Really," Voldemort said silkily, crimson eyes gleaming as he took a step back, putting his wand away in the pocket of his robes, "for the rest of your life? Very well, it seems we are in agreement."

_"No -"_ Voldemort couldn't leave him here - it was bad enough being trapped in this tiny room, but if Voldemort tried to keep him permanently in an _orb_, in this terrible, spaceless thing that stripped him of body and movement - he was afraid the threads of his already fraying sanity would come loose altogether. Fear devoured him, quashing his pride. "Don't do this to me - you _can't _do this to me - _please - let me out…" _The last words came out in a sorrowful moan, and tears pricked shamefully at his eyes.

And Voldemort smiled - a mad, awful smile - and long, pale fingers reached through the glittering cage and took hold of Harry's chin, sharp nails digging into his skin. "Better," he hissed, his cold voice strangely fond, "what are you, Harry Potter?" Harry snarled and tried to yank out of his grasp, but Riddle held firm. Then the Dark Lord laughed and let go, and Harry drifted helplessly back to the centre of the sphere. "It has been a long day for both of us," Riddle said quietly, "perhaps you would prefer some time to reflect upon your predicament?"

"You're _mad," _Harry spat, "utterly mad." He squeezed shut his eyes, blood roaring in his ears, and tried to slow his breathing. Panic still hummed along every line of his body like electricity, threatening to spark and swallow him again in blank fire at any moment. But Harry wouldn't beg - he _wouldn't _give in - the entire world would have to be on fire before that bastard would ever hear Harry say that he belonged to Lord Voldemort.

But Riddle was still smiling, "Good… you will need that resolve when you can no longer remember what it is to touch or be touched, to fly, or see beyond the confines of these walls… I think I _will_ keep you in this cage, Potter." He laughed, "I think I shall enjoy seeing your eyes grow dull with despair."

Harry's breathing grew erratic with that hysterical vein of panic, thumping harder and harder within him. With effort, he forced down the terrified denial that threatened to rip out of him. "You'll regret this, Riddle," he hissed, trembling and holding back furious tears so that they would not give Voldemort further satisfaction. "You will live to regret this, I swear."

"It always amazes me," Riddle said lightly, those crimson eyes gazing somewhere beyond Harry, "that you do not simply bow to Lord Voldemort's wishes," Harry got the impression that Voldemort wasn't just talking about him anymore, "so much useless struggle when it is clear from the start that you are destined to lose."

"I'm destined to _kill you_," Harry informed him, snarling and straining against the magic imprisoning him, "and you can believe that I'll find a way to do it. I'm most of the way there already."

_"You are nothing!"_ Voldemort screeched, _"I am the greatest wizard who has ever lived!" _

"You're a mad old fool!" Harry bellowed right back at him, "and _I'm_ thestudent who's hunted down and destroyed six-sevenths of the so-called greatest sorcerer in the world! And if there was ever anything _great_ about you, it must've gotten lost in the parts I've already finished off - because the part that _you've_ got left is nothing but a_ bloody sadistic lunatic!"_

_"Crucio!" _And every time Harry expected the pain to get easier, to get used to it, but it was as though there were a thousand needles pressing into every muscle in his body at the same time as iron claws were ripping his flesh away, layer by layer, as he screamed in rage and agony._ "I am Lord Voldemort!"_ came the furious shriek as the curse lifted and, sick and dizzy with pain, Harry realised he was right, Riddle _was_ insane. He actually believed everything he was saying. He really didn't understand why people didn't just roll over and worship him.

"I know… bloody well… who you are," Harry panted, licking his lips. "You're a fucking _coward."_

_"Am I now?"_ Voldemort whispered softly, "Well, perhaps Lord Voldemort shall pay a visit to Paris… perhaps_ that _will curb your insolence..."

_No. _Harry's thoughts came screeching to a halt. That would not happen. He _would not let that happen. _

"No," Harry gasped out before he had time to change his mind, mouth burning with pain and battered dignity. "No - please - you're - you're right… you're… you're Lord Voldemort… and you're the most powerful wizard…" he swallowed dryly, "the most powerful wizard… that ever... lived…"

His pride _ached _with it, but he could not let that happen. No one else would die - _Ginny _would not die - on his account. And then there was the thought of remaining locked for even a day in this suffocating, magic-suspended hell, struggling to feel his own body, _trapped, _while Lord Voldemort hunted down Harry's few friends that still remained alive_ - _it was enough to make his insides writhe with fresh panic. _It's not so bad, _he told himself, _it's not so bad because you know it's not true… "_You're right…"

"Of course I am," the crimson eyes were wicked, smouldering embers. "And what are_ you?_" Riddle was practically glowing with foul satisfaction.

"I…" He couldn't say it. "I'm…" He _couldn't say it._

_"Yes?" _Voldemort's forked tongue was stretching out toward him, repulsively eager. Harry shut his eyes and remembered vividly the smell of Ginny's hair, her delicate jaw.

"I'm… your prisoner," he whispered.

"You are my Horcrux," a cold, spidery hand brushed gently against his cheek and Harry flinched, "you are _mine_…"

The freezing touch of Voldemort's fingers made insects crawl and wriggle beneath Harry's skin, but he was afraid to pull away - afraid of inciting Voldemort's anger, afraid of doing anything that might put Ginny at risk. So he shuddered and closed his eyes, trying to pretend he was somewhere else, somewhere far away… "Yeah," he whispered. "Yes. I'm… I'm yours."

And, suddenly, the glittering orb vanished and Harry crumpled to the floor. "You see?" Riddle hissed, "I can be a generous lord, Potter. All you need do is obey."

Everything ached. Harry dragged himself to the wall and slumped against it, his newfound freedom overshadowed by the weight of his humiliation. He felt filthy, even though it had been a lie - even though he'd been forced to say it… "Right," Harry said hoarsely, shutting his eyes. "Thank you for your… generosity…"

"My pleasure," Riddle breathed, flat nostrils quivering, "do you think, Potter, that you deserve a reward for your obedience?"

Harry's mouth went dry. He didn't want anything else from Voldemort - he wanted Riddle to _leave. _"I… I s'pose that'd be up to you," he said, trying to sound grateful.

Voldemort smirked, "Quite right." He glided across to where Harry was slumped. "In this instance, I am inclined to generosity, in order to demonstrate the merits of good behaviour." There was a blinding bolt of power from Elder Wand and suddenly sunlight streamed into the room, dawn painting Voldemort's serpentine face golden. A _window… _Harry staggered to his feet, his anger and fear that this might be another trick eclipsed by shining relief.

He exhaled slowly, peering through the glass, staring out at the sun rising over a dark forest and vast battlements of black stone far, far below. It all felt vaguely familiar. "Where are we?"

"This," Voldemort gestured toward the sprawling, grim fortress, "is Nurmengard."

_Nurmengard. _The prison that had detained a Dark Lord. It was nearly as bad as Riddle giving him a snitch simply to torture him with a cage. Here was a window that would remind him every day of how hopeless his situation truly was. Of course Voldemort would lock him up in a prison in Germany, of all places. No one would ever find him here.

It was a long moment before Harry realized Riddle was waiting for him to speak. "Thanks."

"In truth, it has not been used for many years." Voldemort explained, seeming not to notice Harry's sarcasm. "Except, of course, for this cell. Nurmengard has no need for Dementors, it turns the very magic of its prisoners against them."

Harry could not tear his eyes away from the window. Freedom was so close to him, set apart by only a thin layer of glass… "How convenient," Harry said quietly.

"One has to admire the design," Riddle went on, "though I certainly had to make improvements. The guards still imagine themselves to be guarding Lord Grindelwald." He laughed, high and cold.

Harry wanted to scream, to throw things, to punch Voldemort across the nose again. But he simply stood, sick with despair and wishing that Riddle would just leave him alone already, or at least go across the room again and stop standing so close. Generosity his _arse _- the only reason Voldemort had so charitably given him a window was to further reinforce his imprisonment. "A castle full of people you've driven insane," he said roughly. "I suppose I fit right in."

The Dark Lord laughed again and ruffled his hair; long, loathsome fingers brushing across his scalp in a parody of affection. Harry couldn't help it - he wrenched away. "Don't bloody _touch _me_,_" he spat, but he shrank against the wall like a wretched, trembling dog.

"And why should I not touch what is mine?" Voldemort asked silkily, the undertone of threat horribly clear in that high, icy voice.

_I'M NOT YOURS! _he shrieked silently, furiously, and bit his tongue until he tasted metallic blood. "I'm not an object," he said, voice shaking with leashed fury, "and I'm not a snake - I'm a _person -_ and you don't - you don't _pet _people!"

"Nonsense," Riddle stroked his fingers up the nape of Harry's quivering neck and into his hair, curling it into knots with his awful nails. "I see it done all the time." The crimson eyes shone with malice.

Harry's mouth was very dry. He reduced the world to the slow, measured expansion and compression of his lungs, the rush of oxygen through his nostrils, and tried desperately not to feel Lord Voldemort's long, spidery fingers stroking the back of his head. "That's different," he said hoarsely, swallowing, "that's between men and women - between people who are _- together, _not…"

"Not _what_, exactly?" came the quiet his, talons grasping his hair all the tighter.

Fever-bright fear shivered through him, Harry's head pulled backward to stare up into those cold, unforgiving eyes. Riddle didn't mean that - he _couldn't _mean that… "I'm not -" _yours, _"like that," he said, and he hated the sound of his voice, so small with terror, almost pleading, "w_e're _not like that - I - have a girlfriend."

And, mercifully, the awful hand fell away as though scalded. "That is _disgusting_, Potter," Voldemort sniffed, stepping away, "As if Lord Voldemort cared for such lewd pastimes."

The air seemed to come back into the room; sweet relief rushed through him. Harry rubbed unconsciously at the back of his neck, as though he could scrub away the shadow of Voldemort's fingers crawling across his scalp. He stood with hunched shoulders against the wall and did not take his eyes off the Dark Lord, as though Riddle might leap at him at any moment and touch his neck again. "You're the one trying to stroke my bloody hair."

* * *

Voldemort took another step back. It seemed ridiculous to him that Potter should have taken his gesture as a kind of sexual advance. He wanted nothing of the sort - had seen the boy as a child to whom such affections would be seen as threateningly paternal. His thin lip curled in distaste at Potter's implication, deeply offended not only by the assumption but also the images implicit in such an accusation. Potter touching _him_. The boy was cowered against the wall like a hunted animal. His soft hair was in disarray, cheeks still flushed from the Cruciatus; he had grown thin and weak from his imprisonment. Only his eyes, darting wildly from Voldemort's face to his hand, had not lost their fire. They were as bright and fervid as ever.

He had merely been playing with Potter, that was all. He refused to acknowledge that part of him had enjoyed touching the young man in any way. It had been a mere game. He had not, he realised, meant to take it this far. He wanted Potter pliant - not brittle with misuse. "It was only cruelty," he murmured. "I have no interest in such activities."

Potter let out a hysterical, miserable laugh. "Yeah, so I'll just count on you not to be cruel, then."

"Of course you may." Voldemort said icily. "Provided you are obedient."

Potter said nothing, sulking furiously, but in his glaring green eyes Voldemort saw his answer: the Dark Lord instructing the boy not to run, and Potter sitting compliantly in the grass - the fleeting joy of the snitch engulfed by blinding terror at being so utterly _trapped _for the mere sake of the amusement glittering in terrible crimson eyes- Potter fighting down bile and pride around the words _I'm yours_. The young man's eyes burned with loathing as they stared up at him: _I was obedient._

* * *

The crimson eyes stared at Harry as though he suddenly did not make sense then, in an instant, flickered back to Voldemort's usual gleaming blankness. "Obedience is not merely action, Potter," he said quietly, "it is attitude. Of course, a certain amount of impudence can be amusing, but too much can become… dangerous."

"Then how come you don't just - Obliviate me?" Harry demanded in a snarl, unable to help himself. "Empty me out! Surely I don't need to be alive to be a Horcrux. If it's a walking, brainless corpse you want, then why don't you just - go ahead and make me one already?"

Voldemort gazed at him for a moment and there was a strange, speculative glitter in those cat-like eyes. "Now, now…" he whispered, "...what kind of wizard do you take me for?"

"I've already said that you're the greatest wizard in the world," said Harry, "I would think you could manage a simple memory charm."

The Dark Lord laughed, high and chilling. "So _brave_…" he murmured.

"It's not funny!" Harry snapped suddenly, shaking off the ghosts of his better judgement to scowl thunderously at Lord Voldemort. "Make up your bloody mind! Do you want me to be brave, or obedient? Will you find it _amusing _today, how I've got nothing left to live for, or would you rather I simper about on my knees a bit for you and feed you lies about how brilliant you are! _What do you want from me?-!"_

Voldemort said nothing, hairless brow furrowed, red eyes narrowed - yet the air between them did not seethe with dark magic waiting to be unleashed. "I _am_ brilliant," he said at last, and there was something pathetic in the way it was hissed as though it were the only thing that mattered.

"Yeah, brilliantly self-obsessed," Harry muttered, and wrapped his arms around himself as he turned back to the window. It was dawning upon him that trying to talk to Riddle was useless. Voldemort was clearly living in a world woven of innumerable delusions of his own making - and he'd been living there for seventy years. There wasn't a chance he would step outside of it now, and for Harry's sole benefit.

"I _am_ brilliant!" Voldemort hissed again, louder this time, and now magic crackled around him, everything thickening with strange, writhing shadows. "I, Lord Voldemort, have achieved that which other wizards cannot even conceive! I am the master of the Elder Wand! I sit upon the throne of Wizarding Britain! My knowledge of the arcane is unparalleled! My obsessions have brought me glory, they have brought me power, and they have brought me _you_. Everyone shall kneel before me, Harry Potter, even - especially - _you_. I am Lord Voldemort and I deservesuch worship. I have won, as I always," his breath caught slightly, "_always_ knew I would."

"Worship," said Harry darkly, "is more than action, Riddle. It's attitude. And there may be people kneeling for you, but I can promise that they aren't worshipping you. There's nothing to worship _about _you. They hate you."

_"They fear me!"_ Voldemort shrieked, "They cannot even bear the sound of my name without quaking. Small, quivering creatures in awe of my wrath, my servants, and my power. You think to mock me with their hatred? I know they hate me, as they despise all who are more powerful than themselves. They cannot bear to meet my eyes, nor hear my voice, without feeling that which all prey feel for the snake who devours them."

"That's because everything about you is repulsive," Harry hissed. "There have been plenty of powerful men who have also been respectable - men who were adored even as they were admired." _Like Dumbledore._ "But you - _you _will _never _know that kind of reverence, Riddle, because everyone will always see you for the monster that you are."

* * *

It was true, of course. Lord Voldemort had cast aside his humanity, had become far, far more than a man and - in doing so - had sacrificed the camouflage of Tom Riddle's handsome face. And what a relief it had been, how splendid to be free of the restrictions of his youth and bask in the fear that clotted the very air around him, feasting upon its scent. _Everything about you is repulsive._ They shuddered, flinched, and he saw the revulsion in their eyes - in their minds.

"I do not concern myself with the opinions of my inferiors," he said. It was a lie.

"Yeah, I'm sure that's why you went through so much trouble to take over Britain - just so everyone could revile you."

"_I warn you_, Potter, do _not_ test my patience." And that was meant to be all. but somehow the threat - which sufficed for everyone else - was not enough for Potter: "I have always known myself to be reviled. Even at Hogwarts, all anyone found admirable was the shell I constructed for their benefit. At least, now that everyone knows what lay behind that mask, I am no longer required to lie." It was only that sometimes, sometimes he had enjoyed the praise, the admiration that came with his deceptions.

"But you still crave it, don't you?" Something shifted within Potter's expression, and he stepped forward, an almost predatory glint in his green eyes. "You're lying to yourself now, but you can't lie to me. I see you for what you really are, Riddle. You _want _them to worship you. It kills you that instead of wanting to bask in the brilliance of their blessed _lord, _they would all rather run as far away from you as possible."

"They are weak," Voldemort whispered, and his face ached with the weight of containing his emotion.

"You _crave _it, Riddle," Potter breathed, standing directly in front of him. "But reverence isn't something you can force into a person, is it? The only thing that ever gave you the worship you wanted was a snake that was too stupid to know any better. You failed with your Death Eaters, you're failing with Britain, and you'll fail with me, too."

Voldemort cried out, a long, gasping, wail. He turned away from Potter, too wounded to even think of his wand. Something was slithering up through his stomach and into his chest and throat, pushing aside his organs, pressing the breath from his lungs: the grief he had banished to the edges of his mind, into dream and disbelief. _Nagini was gone. _Potter's eyes bore silently into his back.

Sharp-nailed fingers snagged against the stone wall and Voldemort tried valiantly to quell such weakness, but it continued in shallow, helpless breaths that hissed and spluttered as though they were not his own. Tears were pricking his eyes like needles and he drove his sharp canines into his meagre lip until blood flowed alongside salt. _Nagini. Nagini. Nagini. _But he was not crying for his dear snake, shattered across the void, but for himself alone.

"So this is what it's all about?" Potter's soft voice drifted across the depths of his despair. "You think you can just… come here and take out all your anger over your dead pet on me?"

"I…" that was not it at all, just… _there's nothing to worship about you - they hate you…_ No one had come looking for him. So many oaths, declarations of loyalty, and no one had seen fit to seek him out - the foolish had gone to Azkaban and the fearful had hoped him gone forever. Only a regretful, snivelling coward, seeking nothing but revenge on the friends who had spurned his pathetic offer of a second betrayal, and only after thirteen long years. That was the difference between them. Harry Potter's supposed death had been greeted with defiance and grief. His had merited only desperation and fireworks.

A small hand brushed his cloak.

"How about… we make a deal?" Potter's words were tense with poorly disguised hope. "Let's say… you don't put me in that cage. Ever again. And - you'll bring me outside sometimes. Once a week, at least. And in return I'll…" Potter inhaled. "I... can worship you. The way your snake used to." Another pause. "The way you'd like."

"You forget, Potter," Voldemort said, attempting to rein in his heaving breath, "I can read your mind. I know. I_ always_ know." Nothing was ever hidden from him, no measure of horror or revulsion escaped his notice.

Desperation surged within the young wizard beside him, and Potter struggled despairingly to hold it down, away from Voldemort's sight. "Please. I'll… I'll learn. I'll do anything. But I can't stay in here anymore - and I _can't _go back to - to _that…" _The boy's fingers touched his robes. "I know how much you crave it still. I saw it just now, in your eyes - it eats away at you, doesn't it? It's _killing _you… but I'll… I'll do whatever you need me to. I'll give you what you need."

Voldemort laughed -_ it can never kill me _- but it was neither high nor cold, but a cracked and wheezing cough as he reached a hand up to touch the clammy fingers that clung to his robes. They twitched under his, as though they longed to pull away, but Potter closed his eyes and did not release him. The young man's cheeks burned with displeasure as he knelt slowly to the floor, hope a wild and frantic thing which danced and skipped along the heartbeat beneath his fingers.

"I'll learn," Potter said softly, head bowed. "Please. You've got to promise."

He hardly knew what to do, or what to say. It would not be real. It would be little but false comfort, in the end. But he yearned to say yes, as alone as he had once been when he first drifted across the mind of his dear snake. "I promise," he whispered with soft, slow wonder, sinking down so that he knelt on the floor opposite Potter, as magic coiled between their fingers and sang with the truth of Lord Voldemort's oath. _"Obliviate."_

* * *

_Authors' Note: A big thank you to all our wonderful reviewers.__ It means very much to us to know you're enjoying the story. The next chapter of Yew and Holly will be up shortly. Thank you again for reading!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter IV**

* * *

Harry Potter knelt in the dirt. Perspiration trickled down his neck, and he wiped it away with the back of one filthy hand. The sleeves of his cotton tee were rolled up past his elbows, but he was still sweating. It wasn't yet noon and he was already tired with the heat; he would need to get a move on if he was going to finish before the summer sun reached its zenith.

Birdsong flitted from tree to tree above him, punctuated by the occasional cluck of a hen as Harry gently turned over another long, skinny green bean in his fingers, feeling for the bulging seeds within that would tell him that it was ripe. He hummed softly to himself as he went about his work. It was a large garden, with every variety of vegetable hardy enough to survive in the filtered light of the forest. It wasn't a glamorous job, harvesting, but Harry appreciated his chores; it always made him uncomfortable and restless if his days weren't structured.

He had almost finished his second basket when he heard the voices drifting through through the trees, not more than fifty feet away.

His blood ran cold. _Snatchers. _He cursed himself for not paying better attention - he was always able to sense when the Dementors were coming, could feel them from a mile away as they whispered through the forest on their hungry tide of terror and anguish, searching for traitors. But the Snatchers were both less intimidating and infinitely more so - for they were much smarter than Dementors, and much less predictable.

Heart skipping, he rose to his feet as quickly as he dared, trying not to make any noise. The voices were nearer now - Harry had maybe less than a minute before they would stumble right upon him. He could certainly make it to the house in time, where the Fidelius would place him beyond their reach - but he knew it wasn't really him they were most concerned with.

They were looking for his godfather.

Harry wracked his mind, trying to remember what the schedule had been for today. Had he been out hunting? It was too dangerous for either of them to go into town for anything less than what was absolutely necessary, so they caught and grew all their own food. But the forest was much more dangerous than a trip into town if there were Snatchers about, and if the fugitive of the century was walking about undisguised… Harry cut the thought off before the scenario could play out fully in his mind. He would _not _let that happen. There was absolutely no way that would happen. They'd been on the run for too long to get caught now - and his godfather had already done his suffering - he'd done thirteen years of it -

Harry scrambled around the side of the house, ducking into the chicken coop and hissing his name. No sign of him. Harry next headed to the smokehouse, darting across the yard with swift, soundless steps. If he was out hunting in the woods, the potions he used for the preservation of the venison would be gone as well. Loud, sniggering laughter rolled across the woods behind him, and sweat broke out across Harry's brow that had nothing to do with the heat as he peeked through the window and found the shelf empty.

_Shit. Shit shit shit. _His insides knotted with panic. If there was one band of Snatchers, then there were probably a few more wandering around as well. What if he'd already been caught? What if Harry was too late? He spun around, waves of nauseous fear rolling over him, and he pulled his wand from his waistband as the voices drew nearer. Well, whatever happened, Harry would not go down without a fight. He _would not _let them take him - the only thing Harry had left - the only person that hadn't yet been stolen by the Death Eaters and the Ministry and this miserable war. He hadbeen through the veil and back again - he'd faced Death and walked the other way - and it was not simply for Harry to let him be caught out by a gaggle of incompetent fools from the Ministry.

"Hey, Sid!" one of them yelled. "I think I 'eard somethin' - over 'ere!"

A stocky, beady-eyed man was pointing his wand in Harry's direction, and Harry froze. There were four wizards, plus a big one - two heads above the rest - who looked like his mother had been a troll, and who gave a great sniff, rolling his head back, "Yeah," he rumbled, "can smell people. Can smell magic, boss."

"Right," the one called Sid smacked his lips together. He looked to be in charge. "Come out now," he called out, "and we won' feed you to trollface, here!"

"M', name's Pete, boss." the half-troll mumbled.

Harry felt incredibly stupid. There obviously wasn't any prisoner with them. He could have simply hidden in the house after all. "Or you could turn around," Harry responded levelly, gripping tight to his wand, "and no one will have to get hurt."

"It's five against one, kid," Sid smirked at him, wand at the ready, as he ran his other hand through his lank hair. "Don' be stupid."

"I'm not a kid." Harry stepped forward, encouraged by the fact that they only thought there was one - _they haven't found anyone else…_ "And I'm also not so stupid that my greatest purpose in life is sniffing around a bunch of trees for people to bully. I'll tell you one more time - walk away now, and no one will get hurt."

"Let's jus' go," Pete said quietly, "I bin in them correc'ive places, boss, they-"

"Shut your gob, trollface!" Sid yelled, "are you blind as well as dumb? That's _Harry Potter_."

Harry's mouth went dry, and he heard himself force a laugh. "He's the only one of the lot of you with any brains," he said, sounding braver than he felt. "You really think Harry Potter would just be out for a stroll in the woods?"

"Harry Potter's dead," another one said, "everyone knows that. What are you talking about, Sid?"

"Hey, I was_ there_ that night, alright?" Sid said, "in the Forbidden Forest. With the _Dark Lord_. An' I'm _telling_ you that's Harry Potter."

Something stuttered to a halt in Harry's mind. He inhaled sharply, unsure of why he was suddenly so dizzy. "What are you on about?" he said slowly, forgetting his ruse. "What night? You... knew the Dark Lord?"

"Well, uh…" Sid stumbled on Harry's confusion, "not _personally_."

"I met 'im once," said the beady-eyed wizard, "scary fucker… uglier 'n trollface here."

"M' name's Pete!"

Harry turned to the huge ogre of a man scowling above the rest of them. "You're clearly the only one of these gits with any sense, Pete," he said earnestly. "Why don't you take your friends back where they came from before this gets bad for them."

"M' not the boss," Pete rumbled, "M' jus' an 'alf-breed..."

"That's right, trollface!" Sid snapped, "I'm in charge, and -"

"M' NAME'S PETE!" the half-troll roared, tackling Sid at the same time as a jet of brilliant, scarlet light hit the beady-eyed snatcher in the back of the head. The man fell to the ground, stunned, while the other two screamed. One was locked in a desperate, futile attempt to pull Pete off of Sid while the other snatcher was looking around, wide-eyed, trying to find the source of the spell that had knocked out his friend.

Wild relief crashed over Harry - _safe, safe, he hadn't been caught_. A knowing grin spread across Harry's face, no longer burdened by the weight of his anxiety. He did not join the snatchers in looking for the person who had cast the stunner; Harry knew they would see nothing there.

"It's not too late to get out of here, you know," he said lightly over the shouts of the quarreling wizards.

The one who'd been searching for their attacker gave Harry a last, frightened look, "Harry Potter, as if anyone would believe me anyway!" and Disapparated. Pete was still growling and Sid screamed as the half-troll pounded his fists into him.

"Leave him alone, ya filthy half-breed!" the last snatcher yelled out. Pete grunted as the man flung a Stinging Hex which hit him square behind the shoulder-blades. But before the Snatcher could try something more effective, Harry had hit the man with a body-binding spell. In nearly comical slow-motion, he tipped to the ground, as stiff as a wooden board.

Glancing at his handiwork with pride, Harry then turned and approached the dazed half-troll, who still had a wailing, battered Sid pinned to the grass. As satisfying as it was to watch this Sid person get what was clearly coming to him, things might get a little more complicated if a half-troll ended up beating someone to death right on their front lawn. Somehow, he had a feeling that wasn't the best way to keep the Ministry away from their hiding place.

"Hey," Harry said gently, ignoring Sid's sobbing moans. "Er - Pete. Hang on. Let's just - take it easy, all right? You said you've been in correction before, yeah? Well, listen - this lowlife? He isn't worth going back."

"Name's Pete," the half-troll growled. "Mrs Montgomery said. Never called Pete trollface."

"Well, um, I don't suppose Mrs. Montgomery would want you to go pummeling people who did, now would she?"

After a long moment, punctuated only by Sid's moans, Pete shook his head and stood up. The chief snatcher gurgled, scrambling and stumbling to his feet, black robes sticky against swollen skin. He spat a thick glob of blood at Harry, who flicked it aside with his wand, scowling.

"If you come here again," he said in a low voice, staring at the Snatcher straight in the eyes, "you won't have another chance to leave. Now clean up this mess," he gestured at the wizards scattered across the ground, "and _bugger off._"

"S-sure, whatever you say," he stuttered through a bloody lip. "C'mon… c-c'mon, tr - er - P-pete…"

And, as they made to leave - Sid shooting dirty looks at both Harry and his half-troll companion - a field of white light surrounded the snatchers, knocking Harry back. A figure stepped into the brilliance, tall and implacable. _"Obliviate,"_ murmured his godfather, and the word resounded like a sound whose lyrics he couldn't quite remember, as the snatchers were banished from the forest by powerful magic.

Eventually, the light dimmed, leaving Harry and Voldemort standing alone in the forest. "Are you all right, Harry?" he asked quietly.

"Are _you_ all right?" Harry stared at him in disbelief. "Blimey, I was worried about you! I thought that they'd - that they'd _found_ you - where the hell did you go?"

"I was hunting, but I ended up stalking three fools investigating my wards…" his godfather's voice was soft with anger.

"Hell." Harry ran a hand through his hair and gazed past Voldemort into the trees, where the band of wizards had been hunting them. "D'you think they've found us? Will we - have to leave?" The idea of being on the run, again, after finally finding a place where they were safe…

Long, pale fingers found his cheek. "No, Harry, these fools clearly had no idea what they were blundering into. I promised you a home here. I will _not _let sure poor wizards as these force me to break my promise to my godson."

_When this is all over, we'll be a proper family. _Harry leaned into Voldemort's touch with a sigh of relief. "I took care of them pretty well, didn't I?" he couldn't help asking with a small, self-indulgent smile.

"You certainly did," his godfather smiled and held him close, ruffling his hair.

"Would've been perfectly fine on my own, y'know."

The smile became thin and strained and Harry could feel the sharp pulse of his godfather's heatbeat through the long fingers that brushed against his cheeks, coming to rest against his scar, where Harry held the greatest and the last of Voldemort's secrets.

Harry shut his eyes. How thrilled he had been, when Voldemort had decided to make him his Horcrux. The ritual had been painful, but it had already been Harry's mission to care for his godfather - what better way to keep him alive than safeguard his soul? "I wasn't really in danger. Besides," he murmured, grinning, "the risk is what makes it fun - you said so yourself."

Voldemort laughed and the tension was released, Harry joining in as Voldemort led him inside. It was a handsome three-story cottage, built by his godfather's prodigious magic, and Harry's first real home since Hogwarts. He loved it. "Tonight I will strengthen the spells to keep out intruders," Voldemort hissed, seating himself in his favourite armchair - the one closest to the fireplace - and, with an elegant twist of those lean fingers, a fire flickered into being in the hearth. "We will not be bothered by those Ministry fools again."

The smile fell from Harry's face. He sat across from his godfather, leaning forward on his knees. "I dunno... they've never come so close before, have they? What if they find you while you're out hunting beyond the wards?"

"_They will not!"_ he spat, crimson eyes blazing. "You know better than anyone the precautions I take to ensure our safety."

Harry flinched. "You don't have to be a git about it," he said a little hotly, feeling injured. "I'm not the one they're really after, now, am I? You can hardly blame me for worrying about you." His godfather's anger was constantly thrumming beneath the surface of his mind, forever changed by his time behind the veil; Harry had to remind himself constantly that it was not his fault when Voldemort snapped at him.

"Of course I do not blame you," his godfather said quietly, looking away.

Harry lifted himself off the armchair and crossed the rug to kneel at Voldemort's feet. How he loved to curl up on the soft rug by the fire at his godfather's side, the fire like warm summer sun on stone. Gently, he clasped one cool, spidery hand between his own. "We'll be safe as long as we stick together," Harry told him softly. "We make a good team, don't we?"

Voldemort grasped his fingers tightly. "The best," but the slit-pupilled gaze drifted elsewhere, to some unknowable place Harry couldn't reach.

"That was some memory charm," Harry added thoughtfully, "I never knew you knew how to do those. You ought to teach me - I imagine they could be quite useful."

"The magics of the mind are delicate and complex, as well as useful," his godfather replied, carding his fingers through Harry's hair. "The trick is finding subjects to practice on, unfortunately. I do not fancy volunteering for you. I might end up unable to remember anything at all. Your spellwork has never been particularly subtle, Harry."

Harry bristled. "You've always underestimated me," he complained, pulling away. "I didn't have any trouble fending for myself before."

"I have_ never_ underestimated you," Voldemort snapped back.

"You have so," he said unhappily, leaning back on his heels and staring into the fire. "_Everyone_ has. Did you know they said I was dead?"

"Dead?" His godfather echoed lightly, crimson eyes curious.

"Yeah," Harry frowned, running another restless hand through his hair. His mind was rutting up against something again, skipping over something he couldn't quite grasp. "Dead. They said - a lot of interesting things, actually."

"Tell me," Voldemort murmured, "I am agog to know what such a group of cretins had to say that qualifies as interesting."

"Well, it's... a bit odd, really." Harry's brow furrowed as he continued to stare into the fire. "The one was talking about a forest - this forest? But there wasn't anyone else there that night… it was only the two of us…" There was a long silence as Harry thought about this further, frowning. "It's... not important."

"_You_ are important," Voldemort replied, and that was the end of the conversation.

* * *

The darkness outside their window hummed with the soft chorus of the forest evening, the summer crickets and the treefrogs. Lying inside his warm bed, Harry was wide awake with them.

He shifted, restless. Voldemort was sleeping at the other end of the bed, his face peaceful and ethereal in the moonlight that peeked through the curtains. It soothed Harry, to be always so close to his godfather. After he had found Voldemort in this very forest, after the suffering that had debilitated his godfather beyond the veil, Harry had never left his side.

He'd been completely dependent on Harry in the beginning, hardly bigger than a small child. He'd slept cradled in Harry's arms, wretched and helpless; he'd often woken in the night crying out for the potion which kept his spirit's tenuous hold on that weak, infantile form. He remembered Ron watching, revolted, as Harry had sat inside their tent and coaxed the precious mixture of milk and unicorn blood between his godfather's quivering lips. It was the first time Harry had realized he was different - that he alone was meant to protect and provide companionship for his godfather through the journey of immortality, so fraught with dangers.

By the time Voldemort had regained his body, Ron and Hermione had already been killed, casualties of the war that had raged between Black's Death Eaters and the Ministry. But even after Voldemort had killed Black, the Ministry hadn't stopped pursuing them. They would never accept that his godfather had been framed for another's misdeeds. Harry and Voldemort had been on the run ever since.

It had only been natural for them to continue sharing a bed. His godfather was plagued by terrible nightmares, doubtless from the horrors he had endured after the Battle of the Ministry. Voldemort had not told him very much about his life before he'd been betrayed, but Harry imagined that there was also much else that he did not know. His godfather was often haunted by visions of a great, horrible snake; Voldemort would cry out and thrash in the middle of the night, and Harry would coil his arms around his godfather's shoulders, just as he had when Voldemort was a hatchling, and soothe him, holding him close until his godfather slipped back into peaceful sleep.

But tonight it was Harry who could not find his dreams.

He leaned back against the pillow and stared up blankly at the moon-pale ceiling. He did not hear the singing of the crickets as he frowned, caught up in his whirling thoughts.

_I was _there _that night, alright? In the Forbidden Forest. With the _Dark Lord.

They'd been talking about Voldemort, of course. Harry knew this, even though he'd never thought of his godfather as _the Dark Lord._ It was odd - he'd almost forgotten that Voldemort had been called that. But only by those who still believed him responsible for the terrors executed during Black's reign. For Lily and James Potter's deaths.

Harry rolled onto his side, resting his head in the crook of his elbow. His green eyes were soft with moonlight as he gazed at Voldemort's prone, sleeping form. How strange it was, to think he too had once believed his godfather had betrayed his parents. He didn't like to think about those times before his fourth year, when he'd hated Voldemort and eaten up the lies everyone had fed him about this wizard who had done nothing but devote himself to Harry's well-being ever since they had been reunited. It made him angry and uncomfortable to dwell on such things.

Except that was exactly what he was doing, wasn't he? The frown lines in Harry's forehead deepened.

_I was there that night. In the Forbidden Forest. _

The man was clearly mad - that was the only explanation. Just like the rest of them. Living in a strange, deluded world where his godfather was somehow capable of accomplishing such terrible things. But the problem was that, when the man called Sid had spoken, something had switched in Harry's brain - the shadow of a shadow, a dream that he had once dreamed when he'd already been dreaming. And in that moment he had remembered all at once that everyone had called Voldemort the Dark Lord, and that, once upon a time, Harry had gone searching for the Dark Lord in -

- in a forest. Which was silly, because Harry _had _found him in a forest, hadn't he? But this non-memory was different, because there _had _been other people there, just as this Sid person had claimed; and Harry had been furious and full of hatred - which didn't make any sense, because Harry had been so relieved to find his godfather, weak and diminished as he'd been, in the forest brush in his seventh year.

But it had vanished as quickly as it had come, this shadow-dream-memory that was no longer, and even though its ghost had followed Harry's thoughts for the rest of the day, he could not quite put his finger on what exactly he'd remembered - nor why it had disturbed him so deeply.

A cold hand brushed lightly against the hairs of his arm and one livid eye opened, shining - cat-like - in the darkness. "_Harry?"_

Harry's face was still dark with his thoughts, but he tried to smile anyway. "_I hadn't meant to wake you."_

"_What is it…?"_ his godfather's voice was a smooth, sleepy roll of Parseltongue as he crossed the distance between them and Harry felt the soft exhale of those flat nostrils against his ear. Harry squirmed, goosebumps rippling pleasantly across the back of his neck. How he loved to be so near to his godfather. He slipped an arm around Voldemort's thin body beneath the duvet, pulling him closer.

"_I was having… bad dreams." _The lie was breathed against the curve of his godfather's throat.

"_Tell me,"_ in the dark, the curve of that lipless mouth could easily be seen as something sharp and threatening, but Harry knew it was a smile.

Harry's eyes slid to the window, and he frowned, that phantom of fury and loathing flickering across his thoughts like flame. _"It's strange. I can't… remember."_

"_Dreams have ever been thus," _Voldemort whispered, _"images whose explanations vanish, leaving little but disordered feelings in their wake."_

Harry sighed, frustrated. "I've been trying to tell myself that," he said, falling back into English in his exasperation, "but this time it feels… different."

The other eye opened then. Two eyes that glowed like the dying embers of a fire, narrowing into two veins of bright red - twin cracks in the darkness - red, like the Dog Star. No… no, that wasn't right... _what was it called?_ Harry blinked hard, and when he opened his eyes again, there were no more stars - only Voldemort's eyes, staring at him through the night. "I can't stop thinking about those Snatchers," Harry said softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

"I told you, Harry, they will not find us again… we do not have to leave."

"It isn't that," Harry said, although his stomach knotted at the thought that the home they'd built together could be in danger. "It was… strange. He recognized me. He said that he'd seen me before, in the Forbidden Forest. And for a moment, I felt like…"

"Perhaps he mistook you for another wizard?" his godfather suggested quietly, and Harry shook his head.

"He _knew me_," Harry whispered. "He knew that I was Harry Potter." He looked up suddenly at Voldemort. "He said he knew you, too."

"But he seemed barely older than you," Voldemort replied slowly, as he turned Harry's words over in his mind, "and I have not been - ah - social since you were a baby."

"But how did he know me? And why did I feel like I - like I knew what he was talking about? I've never even _been _in the Forbidden Forest, but I…" Green eyes fell back upon his godfather, wild with something like fear. "For a moment, I thought I had been there with you once."

"With me?" there was something careful, something studied about Voldemort's reaction that Harry didn't know what to make of.

"Well, not with_ you._" Harry's brow furrowed. "With… the Dark Lord." That was what the Snatcher had said. "But… but that _is _you, isn't it? Don't they call you that sometimes?" His head was beginning to throb.

"It is not a name I am particularly fond of." Voldemort sighed, "You know, Harry, how hard I have worked to extend the limits of magic. There have always been those who viewed my success as a threat: envious, spiteful people who delight in tearing down the reputation of anyone greater than themselves."

"But why can't we simply tell them the truth?" Harry asked him for the hundredth time, looking at his godfather with pleading eyes. "You-Know-Who is dead - they must realize by now that you're innocent - I can vouch for you! We can make them listen!"

"We have no proof," Voldemort shook his head. "Besides, anyone can see that I have done more than dabble in dark magic. The Ministry will claim I have employed a Confundus Charm, and that will be enough to discredit your testimony."

Harry rolled onto his back. "The Dark Lord," he muttered bitterly. The words tasted foul. "Perhaps I _have _been hit with a Confundus. By the Snatchers, I reckon. Because for a moment I could've sworn that I…" He turned piercing green eyes on his godfather, looking at him hard. "We - we never _were _in the Forbidden Forest together, were we?"

"I was often in the Forbidden Forest at school," Voldemort replied, eyes gleaming. "Hagrid and I would sneak out–" _to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls, _a voice like an old, familiar friend spoke in Harry's mind, and he could no longer hear what his godfather was saying._ But I admit, even _I_ was surprised by how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realise that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin… as though Hagrid had the brains, or the power!_

Harry sat up abruptly, yanking from Voldemort's grasp. The blankets pooled in his lap as he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, rubbing. The voice had already slipped from his thoughts, along with the handsome face behind it, but Harry's head was still reeling painfully. _What the hell had that been about? _Who _was_ that?And - "Why did people think Hagrid was the Heir of Slytherin?"

"What are you talking about? No one could possibly think Hagrid was the Heir of Slytherin. He was a Gryffindor like your-" _filthy, Mudblood mother._

The world went red. "_What _did you -" he began, and then realized that his godfather had said no such thing - that the _(memory) _voice had been only in his mind. Harry cut off mid-sentence, sweat breaking out across the nape of his neck. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. "I - I think I need to take a walk."

"Harry," Voldemort sat up with a silken rustle of sheets and robes, lean fingers catching his shoulder, "what is going on?"

"I've - just got to clear my head, I think," Harry said, his voice slightly hoarse. "I must've been lying awake a bit too long - I thought I heard - I could've _swore _I heard -" He looked frantically at his godfather, a dark silhouette against the moonlit curtains. "Did you ever have a son?"

"A son?" Voldemort sounded utterly perplexed, "Well… no." He shook his head, as though the movement might shake some sense into the situation. "Harry, I would remember it if such a thing occurred, I assure you."

Harry leaned forward on his knees, rubbing his face. "Well, it's just that I - that I saw this young man, just now, talking about Hagrid, and the Heir of Slytherin, and I thought he - that perhaps he was -" What was he even talking about? There was no one there but them, there was no young man in the room but himself, and besides which Harry had never met such a person in his life. That had not been a face that was easy to forget.

His godfather stood in one slow, graceful motion, wrapping his nightrobe tighter around himself as he did so, its edges whispering against the wooden floorboards. There was a small gap in the curtains so that - for an instant - the gaunt face was illuminated in blue light: mouth taut, red eyes narrowed in calculation. Then Voldemort was sitting beside him, long fingers tilting his chin upwards, crimson gaze staring into his soul - _wait_ -

Harry jerked his eyes away forcefully, snapping the mental connection in half, and then he scowled, rather offended, up at his godfather. "How many times do I have to tell you that I _hate _when you do that?" he said, leaping to his feet. "Why aren't you answering my questions? _Who was that boy?_"

"_I am trying to find out!"_ Voldemort hissed furiously. "It certainly isn't any son of mine, since I have never -" he broke off with a growl.

Harry rounded on him hotly. "Yeah, right! First you avoid every one of my questions, then you try to force your way into my mind - without my bloody permission, mind you - and now you're going to pretend that you've never - _you know - what are you hiding from me?"_

"I _am_ answering your questions," his godfather replied evenly, still sitting on the bed, "none of which make sense, and don't you _dare_ presume to lecture me, Harry Potter, on what I have and have not done."

"Maybe I'd know a little better if you'd just _be honest with me!"_

"This conversation will proceed in a more civilised fashion." Voldemort's voice was silk over steel. "Perhaps, instead of throwing out vague accusations, you should tell me in what way you believe I have deceived you?"

Harry forced himself to inhale deeply, and then he began to pace. "I didn't mean to say that you've - _deceived _me… I just… I'm a bit - shaken up, all right? That boy, he - he _looked _like you - I don't know how, but he did - and Hagrid…"

"Harry, I do not understand what any of this has to do with the Snatchers this morning. Are we talking about a nightmare, or…?"

Harry came to an abrupt halt, as though Voldemort's words had tripped something in his mind. Very slowly, he turned to face his godfather with a penetrating, narrowed stare and took several steps toward him, until he could see Voldemort's red eyes quite clearly in the darkness.

"Tell me, godfather," he said, his voice quite soft. "Were we ever in the Forbidden Forest together?"

Voldemort said nothing.

Harry lifted his hand and summoned his cloak. "I'm going for a walk," he said cooly. "I think it would do me some good to _clear my mind."_

"We were," the two quiet words caught Harry like a physical blow. He stared at Voldemort, feeling as though the floor was tilting sideways, unsure of what this meant.

"Then why can't I remember?" he whispered.

"You were very young," his godfather said sadly, "I would not expect you to remember."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, his mind throbbing inside his skull. "I… well, I suppose that makes sense…" He sat down slowly beside Voldemort, head aching, because it _didn't _make sense; but he couldn't think right now, his thoughts were whirling too quickly for him to seize and concentrate on any single one of them - and his godfather had always made him feel so much better when he was confused, hadn't he? His godfather would take care of him.

"Was… that boy there as well?"

"I… you were with… Draco Malfoy… if my memory serves."

"I'm not talking about _Malfoy," _Harry said, instinctive anger at the mention of Malfoy cutting through the chaos of his thoughts. "I was talking about - the boy. The boy with the dark hair. Rather good-looking, honestly." _Nothing_ like Malfoy.

"I do not recall any such boy. It was in your first year at Hogwarts. I was… drinking unicorn blood."

A pang of sadness struck a chord deep in Harry's chest. The depths his precious godfather had visited as he'd struggled to sustain his meagre life… skulking about the Forbidden Forest, slaughtering unicorns to stay alive… "Perhaps he wasn't there that time," Harry said suddenly, remembering, "but - but he _did _said something about the Forbidden Forest - about wrestling trolls in there, didn't he? And that Hagrid wasn't the Heir of Slytherin. I _heard his voice._" Harry frowned. "It was odd. He really did remind me of you."

"I really do not know this boy you are referring to, Harry." A thin arm snaked around his shoulder, "Are you sure you were not dreaming? What was his name?"

Harry stared thoughtfully into the darkness. "I…" He wracked his mind, trying very hard to remember, but the answer hovered just beyond his reach, the barest shape of it almost completely obscured by the darkness. It was as though his thoughts were - _scrambled, _like a puzzle with the pieces missing - or perhaps like a - like a -

"_Riddle_," Harry said suddenly, jolting upward. "Riddle - his name was Riddle! Tom Riddle." He looked at Voldemort, flush with excitement. "Do you know him?"

Even in the darkness, he could see two spots of colour appear in his godfathers pale cheeks, rising like a bruise on those high cheekbones. Everything was suddenly drawn inward, as though the world was contracting into bright, furious crimson eyes.

"_Ohhh." _It all suddenly made sense. "He was your _boyfriend, _wasn't he?" Harry gave his godfather a conspiratorial grin and he chuckled warmly. "Well, good on you! He was a really handsome bloke, from what I saw of him - if you, er, don't mind my saying so -"

Voldemort stared at Harry as though he'd gone completely mental. "He was my father," his godfather said dully, and Harry blanched.

"Oh." His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. "Well, uh - that's uncomfortable."

"Apparently the last thing my mother said when she died was that she wanted me to be handsome like him," Voldemort cradled his flat face in his hands, his breathing uneven.

Harry felt that same twinge of pity again. It was very unusual for his godfather to be self-conscious about anything. "No one's ever really found me handsome, either," he confided quietly. "I've always been scrawny, and my hair never lies flat. But we all find someone eventually, don't we?"

* * *

Voldemort resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He had been viewed as extremely handsome in his youth, but this would - he considered - serve as an excellent distraction from questions about just what had occurred between them in the Forbidden Forest. The Dark Lord was by no means vain of his appearance and had never felt the need for a spouse that seemed to so preoccupy humankind. After all, an immortal has no use for children.

He continued to snuffle through his fingers, contriving to appear in distress. How ironic it was that the one truth he had told Harry had been the thing the young man had immediately seized upon as a lie. "The very idea of myself and my father…" It wasn't too hard to sound utterly appalled at the idea of performing sexual acts with the stupid Muggle he had killed so long ago.

Harry's pale face grew even paler. "Blimey, I'm sorry," he said in a strained voice and Voldemort's stomach quivered with the knowledge that the bait had been taken, "I hadn't meant to imply -"

"There are far more important things, in any case," he said, injecting a deliberate defensiveness into his tone. "I fail to see why such acts dominate the human psyche as they do." There was no lie in that. Voldemort had always been a little disgusted by the human propensity towards rubbing themselves all over each other. Playing with them, on the other hand… taking them apart and putting them back together according to his wishes...

"There isn't any shame in _wanting _to," Harry said delicately, almost to himself, "you've just got to wait for the right person to come along."

"Well, lack of incest is certainly an excellent place to start." Voldemort replied coldly, although his lip was twitching. _Which was worse by conventional standards: sleeping with your father or murdering your father?_

"Oi - could we just - _stop_ thinking about your father?" Harry was beginning to look distinctly uncomfortable. "That's not what I meant! I was talking about - _other _people." He paused, suddenly examining Voldemort very closely. "You really mean to say - you've never been married? Or, y'know, had a girlfriend?"

"No," the Dark Lord said simply.

"But… don't you get... lonely?"

"I have you," Voldemort answered calmly, smiling at his Horcrux. Harry had, indeed, fulfilled their bargain. It had required some remarkably complicated memory manipulation but everything had turned out far better than even he had expected. A cage of memories to keep his Horcrux under his control and, just occasionally, he would send his lesser servants, such as those pathetic Snatchers, to give truth to the lies.

Harry stiffened, mouth dropping open, and a dark flush spread across his face. "Uh - well that's not - quite what I meant," he said, stumbling over his words. "We're not… well, that is to say, we've never…"

"Of course not," the Dark Lord wondered if, perhaps, he had succeeded a little too much in making Harry uncomfortable. "But you keep me company. We are amiable towards one another - we _trust_ one another. What else is there, in the end?"

"Um… you know…" Harry raised his brow. "_Sex?"_

"What of it?" Voldemort asked, genuinely dismissive of the suggestion.

"_What of it?" _Harry stared at him as though he were wearing one of Dumbledore's lurid three-piece suits. "It's _sex._ It feels good, obviously. Don't you ever miss it?"

"Why would I have occasion to miss what I have never had?" Truly, he would never understand this obsession that seemed to have infected even his Horcrux.

Harry gaped at him. "But it's - it's _nice! _It's pleasurable! It's - god, I can't believe we're having this conversation," he added, the blush rising into his cheeks again. "You know what - the next time we're in town, we're going to find you a nice… a lady-friend. Perhaps that witch who owns the potions shop. I've always thought you spend a _little _too much time lurking around there."

"Because she sources excellent ingredients," Voldemort retorted, alarmed by the prospect of Harry attempting to foist witches upon him. "Honestly, Harry, this discussion is quite beneath you. In any case, on reflection, I believe I have divined the source of your peculiar recollections." Now that he had bought enough time to think of a logical excuse for Harry's visions, the Dark Lord had no desire to continue such a ludicrous conversation.

His Horcrux immediately tensed beside him on the bed. "Have you?"

"Yes," he nodded seriously, carefully considering his next words, "from all that you have said, these images and words are entirely alien to you, correct?"

Harry seemed to be hanging on his every word. "Go on."

"Yet you feel them to be your thoughts, your memories, in the moment when they come to you?"

A troubled look came over Harry's face. "That's right."

Voldemort leaned over to lay a hand against the young man's back. "You are my Horcrux, Harry. It only makes sense that you would possess some of my memories."

Harry's eyes brightened with understanding. "You think that's what was happening? That I was seeing your father?"

"Well, I can think of no other reason for Tom Riddle to be preying on your mind. And you have, on occasion, been able to sense my thoughts."

The young man peered warily into his eyes, "So that's it then? You're not hiding anything from me?"

"I am sorry, Harry." The red eyes were full of gleeful contrition, "I should have told you about him before, but you know I never saw eye to eye with my family. Honestly, I prefer not to think about them."

Slowly, the tension drained from his Horcrux's back. Harry slumped against him, resting his scar against Voldemort's shoulder. "I knew that they were horrible to you, with your brother and all - and you ran away to my dad's for a little while, didn't you? But I - didn't mean to be a git about it. I should've just left it alone."

Voldemort reached around to pull his Horcrux into an embrace. "The Potters extended a measure of trust such as I shall never forget." He shivered with pleasure, thoroughly entertained by his own cleverness.

"I'm glad they did," Harry said softly into his shoulder. "I don't know where I would be right now if they hadn't made you my godfather…"

"You saved me, Harry…" Voldemort whispered and there was no lie in that. The young man had provided him with diversion, trust, and companionship. His loss… losses… had left him unstable to such a degree that he thought his mind was slowly breaking apart to mirror his soul, and it had been guileless Harry who had comforted him, providing him with the stability necessary to continue his reign. Alone… alone he might have drowned the world in vengeance and wasted all his accomplishments in the slaughter.

Harry pulled back and looked at him very seriously in the dark. "_You _did most of the saving," he said softly. "If you hadn't killed You-Know-Who…. the war almost took everything from me. My future, my friends…" A dark, unfamiliar look came into Harry's eyes, his face nearly hidden in shadow. "When I thought it had taken you, too, I could have killed Black with my bare hands. I wasn't going to stop until I'd gotten revenge or died trying."

"You know when to stop though, Harry. We won and yet I… I often feel as though it continues on inside me. A great hankering for blood, you have no idea of how much I desired to kill those Snatchers this morning."

Harry squeezed his shoulders with his hands. "It just… it takes some time, I think," he said, his voice quiet and thoughtful. "Sometimes when I think about it, too, I still get so _furious_ - it - it frightens me, honestly, to think about what I would do if I saw You-Know-Who_ right now..._" Green eyes flashed. "There isn't enough magic in the world for how much I would like to see them all suffer - but especially You-Know-Who, for everything I went through - for everything _you _went through... Black's death was far too easy, if you ask me…"

A shiver ran through Voldemort like a fault line, but he ignored it. "For someone like that," he whispered, "there can be nothing worse than death."

"Of course there is," Harry said hotly. "Watching everyone you love dying, one by one - being utterly helpless to do anything about it - losing everything important to you - being _trapped…" _His fingers were tight around Voldemort's shoulders, his eyes aflame with anger, and the Dark Lord remembered that fire as Harry had spat blood at him across his bed in Nurmengard. "You-Know-Who would've been begging for death, by the time I was through - and _that's_ saying something."

"Harry," he breathed affectionately, taking a soft tone. All this talk of the past troubled Lord Voldemort. "We have both lost a great deal, but we remain, and we have each other. What is the point of speaking ill of those who are little but distant memory? We live and they are dead - is that not revenge enough?"

Harry pulled away bitterly. "That's just it," he said quietly, "I don't _feel _like it's a distant memory. Sometimes I look at you and I remember - I remember…"

He looked up at Voldemort, but his green eyes, catching a glint of moonlight from the window, were utterly impenetrable.

* * *

"Now Harry," Voldemort said, "if you are duelling more than one opponent you need to keep them off balance - you cannot allow them time to utilise their numerical superiority. Observe." No one could Apparate and Disapparate like his godfather. There was a smooth, sinuous grace to his movements; flickering in and out of existence beneath the dappled shade of trees empty of song. All the birds had fled this strange, new creature that could blink through reality without seeming to move, leaving only the hiss and burst of magic, the rustling of leaves, and the sound of Harry's anxious heartbeat.

It was July and the heat was unrelenting, but Voldemort still insisted they train. His only concession to the temperature had been to remove his heavy robes so that he was wearing only his black silk trousers. "Short distance Apparition must be precise. Just step in and step out, do you see?"

Harry wiped his brow and closed his eyes. _Destination, Determination, Deliberation. _He had always preferred his broomstick as a means of transportation, but Voldemort insisted that Apparition was a vital component of duelling, even though Harry had never been taught to use it to that purpose at Hogwarts. That was probably because it was incredibly dangerous to risk repeatedly Splinching yourself in such a short span of time - not to mention bloody difficult.

With great concentration, Harry spun around and successfully reappeared some several feet away - but when he tried to Apparate back a heartbeat later, hardly giving himself a moment to blink, he appeared quite upside-down, and crumpled with a yelp into a heap of jumbled limbs.

His godfather was immediately at his side, "Are you all right?"

Harry gave a weak laugh as he disentangled himself. He tried not to sound as frustrated as he felt. "Yeah, just a bit - _ow _- lopsided…"

"You did very well for a first attempt," his godfather reassured him as he helped him up, "your problem is that, like most wizards, you have been trained to treat every time as though you were travelling halfway across the country. You got stuck because you were concentrating too hard and lost your rhythm." Voldemort paced around the garden, deep in thought, as though searching for the solution to Harry's problem.

"So, what," Harry said incredulously, "I'm just supposed to not think about it?"

"Precisely." Voldemort turned his gaze back to Harry, crimson eyes glittering. "Tell me, did you ever Apparate as a child?"

He remembered much better the beating that had followed after Uncle Vernon had learned they'd found Harry on the roof of the school. "Didn't everyone?" he said, frowning. "But that was different - I was afraid."

"But you were not thinking about_ how_ to get where you wanted to go. Just that you wanted to be elsewhere, yes?"

"I suppose," Harry said slowly, running a hand through his hair as he thought this over. "But I wanted to _badly. _I was in danger."

"Well I am hardly going to put you in danger," his godfather smiled, "my point is that you do not need all of that concentration to cross three feet of grass. You merely need to_ want _to, do you see?"

Harry wet his lips. "All right, let me have another go." His godfather was such a wonderful teacher. Voldemort had always been extremely dedicated to Harry's education; he suspected Voldemort felt personally responsible for Harry's never finishing his seventh year at school, since Harry had spent most of it nursing his godfather back to health after he'd returned from the veil. But Voldemort had more than made up for it in the training that had followed.

Harry closed his eyes. He would _not _mess it up this time. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through space and time with a _crack _- appearing, as he had the first time, in one piece - but again, on the second Apparition, Harry was still thinking too hard about the efforts of the first. He slipped as he slid through his magic, his mind still too focused on his last target, and when he appeared, staggering forward, all the way across the yard - much further than he'd meant to go - his thumb was throbbing and soaked in blood.

Harry swore loudly, hunched over to examine the damage, and swore again. His entire thumbnail had been shaved clean off. Lean fingers suddenly gripped his wrist tight and he screamed as his fingernail grew back in a burst of painful magic. "There," Voldemort let go and a cold numbness suffused Harry's thumb, as though it had been thrust into icy water.

"_Shit, _Riddle!" Harry yelled furiously, and then froze.

Where the hell had _that _come from?

Riddle... had been Voldemort's father's name; but Harry had never thought that it might be Voldemort's as well - not until it had slipped from him in this moment of anger. He cradled his healed hand against his chest, fingers shaking, and stared up at Voldemort in confusion and alarm.

"That is not my name, Harry." Voldemort said tightly, pocketing his wand. "Give it five minutes to heal and you will be fine."

"I know it's not," Harry heard himself say for some reason, even though _yes_, he knew that it _was. _"Thanks." _You could've warned me._

"If I had warned you it would have been worse," his godfather replied, reading his mind without any need for magic.

"I really hate it when you do that," Harry said dryly, his thumb still pulsing with pain. "Right. Watch out. I'm going to try it again."

"That's my godson," Voldemort's smile was wide with approval. "But first," he grabbed Harry's shoulders and suddenly Harry was pivoting - brushing against the inky fingers of the void for a split second - and they were standing on the other side of the garden. "There," his godfather murmured, "you see how it is done?"

How did his godfather make everything seem so effortless? He looked up to ask him this very question - but then he became startlingly aware of how close they were still standing. His heart fluttered and he took a quick step backward, body still humming with Voldemort's magic. "Uh - thanks. I think I've got it now."

_You merely need to _want _to, _his godfather's words echoed in his head. Harry braced himself and tried not to focus too hard on the Apparition itself - only that he wanted to impress Voldemort, to make his godfather beam at him like that again - that he _wanted _-

_(he spun, sliding sidelong through the rift in space and when he stepped out again)_

- crashing directly into Voldemort. Flying bodily into his godfather with no other warning but a dismayed shout, they went toppling painfully to the ground, bony limbs and sweat and a sharp elbow knocking into his nose with a burst of fire.

"_Fuck!_" Harry yelled, trying to clutch his face and untangle himself at the same time.

Voldemort spat something equally rude in Parseltongue and sat up, clutching what looked very much like a broken wrist as he continued to hiss in pain. Harry swore again, sitting back and yanking his wand from his jeans. "Damnit - _shit _- hold still -"

"I shall be fine, Harry, I merely need to -" his godfather flicked his broken wrist and shrieked in pain as his brittle bones clicked back into place, reconnecting themselves as he drew his own wand with a wince.

Harry clamped his hands over his bleeding nose in horror, violently shaking his head.

"It is only pain," Voldemort said, exasperated.

Harry struggled to back away, shoving himself backwards across the grass, even as his nose throbbed with head-splitting pain. Blood was trickling over his lip. "I'll be _fibe!" _

"Very well, if you do not wish for me to do it, do it yourself." his godfather said matter-of-factly, looking slightly hurt that Harry didn't trust him. "You know the spell."

Reluctantly, Harry released his nose with one hand to grasp at his wand, still giving Voldemort a suspicious look as he pointed it at his nose. "_Episkey," _he said nasally, and his nose gently popped back into place - nothing like the agonizing crack he knew from experience would have been the result of Voldemort's attempt at a healing spell. Sniffing, he wiped at his lip with the back of his hand. "Well - er - at least I did it that time," he said, feeling rather mortified.

"True," his godfather nodded sagely, "you have almost graduated from hurting yourself to harming others - an important step in learning any magical technique." He gave a hissy snigger.

"I wasn't _trying _to hurt you," said Harry, offended, "blimey, I'm sorry - let me have a look -"

He crawled back across the grass to sit beside his godfather and reached for his hand. The damage had been healed, but Harry knew it probably didn't feel much better. "Look - you've just got to be a bit gentler about it."

Voldemort gave him a look that reminded him of a resentful cat. His godfather took great pride in his magic. It was endearing. Harry tried not to smile as he pulled Voldemort's hand into his lap and grazed his wand across the delicate wrist bones. "Watch," he murmured. Green eyes fell shut as he whispered a healing spell, channeling the heat from the deep core of his magic, down his arm and through his wand, letting it spread, tingling, through Voldemort's aching wrist bone. He smiled softly as he finished, looking up at his godfather. "There - you see? Isn't that better?"

There was a shiver beside him. "Magic, at its heart, is an intuitive art," Voldemort said softly. "Its command springs from a wizard's quality of will. You, my dear godson, are possessed of a powerful warmth of character that is perfectly suited to the defensive and healing arts." The corners of the lipless mouth quirked upwards as he gave his wrist an experimental wiggle. "Thank you."

"Warmth of character won't get me very far where it matters," said Harry, still frustrated with his inability to accomplish the day's lesson.

"You misunderstand," his godfather laid a hand on his shoulder, drawing them close, "the key is in applying your gifts to the situation at hand. Find a way to draw on the power you used to soothe my wrist. We are very different people, Harry, and - as a consequence - we will always be very different wizards. You are only weak if you cannot find a way to call upon your strength."

And Harry realized all at once that the same, fluttering dizziness he had experienced before had meant, quite simply, that he had wanted to kiss him. Harry wasn't nearly as strong as his godfather, who knew so much about so many different things - but Voldemort always made Harry feel like he could accomplish anything he wanted. _You merely need to _want _to, _Voldemort had said, and perhaps it was as easy as that - perhaps if Harry simply _wanted _to, he could make it happen. Like magic.

"...There are many talented sorcerers who will never achieve greatness because they have forgotten those essential emotions which enabled their first experiences of power - wizards did not always have wands, Harry. Long ago, they relied on will alone to achieve their ends. You - more fortunate than they - have been taught spells, but now you are required to make them your own. And, with the display of power I have just witnessed, I highly doubt you will fail if you truly set your mind to the task."

It was impossible not to feel how the air thickened with those words, how every hair on the back of Harry's neck seemed to tingle with energy. Voldemort _knew._ He _had _to know. This was clearly what he was talking about - this was just another lesson, a test of Harry's bravery. Voldemort had always presented Harry with all the pieces so he could figure out the answer for himself - and wasn't that what his godfather was doing right now?

And Voldemort… Voldemort had never been kissed before.

Harry's mouth was suddenly very dry. "You - really believe that?" he asked, just to make absolutely sure.

"Certainly," his godfather replied, "power merely requires the will to seek it. Once you have found that path, you will be on your way to greatness, I have no doubt."

And so, his heart beating a wild, dizzying rhythm, Harry leaned across his godfather's lap and kissed him.

Voldemort went as still as a marble statue, mouth unmoving, frozen to the spot. Harry's stomach plummeted, but he kissed his godfather again, fingers curling around long, pale hands, certain that Voldemort had felt it too - he _had _to have felt it -

- only to have that smooth flesh yanked from his lips and fingers, as he stared into crimson eyes wide with shock. "_What_ - how, how _dare_ you!"

Harry felt as though his insides had been plunged completely in icy water. He shrank backward, his mouth trembling - the same mouth that had just been moving so slowly against Voldemort's thin lips, which were now curled in furious indignation. "I thought that's what you meant!" he cried, trying to ignore the dull, wounded ache that was spreading through his entire chest. "You said that I had to - to apply my strengths to the matter at hand!"

"I was talking about _magic!_" Voldemort hissed, "How, in Salazar's name, did you think I was referring to… _that?_" The last syllable was spat out of that lovely, creamy mouth with such disgust that Harry felt his own stomach knot and twist with self-loathing.

"I thought..." he said, and he hated the sound of his voice, so small, almost pleading, "I thought that you had _noticed_ - I hadn't meant to - to offend you -"

"Noticed what, exactly?" his godfather said sharply. "That you appear to have been neglecting your training in favour of thinking about sordid intimacies with your guardian?" The indignation slipped from that serpentine face, giving way to something cold and vicious: "What would your parents think?"

Harry thought he might throw up. He could not imagine anything more awful than the feeling that was currently swallowing him whole - complete and utter mortification. Harry leapt to his feet, his chest burning with rejection. "Sorry you find me so repulsive," he snapped, snatching his wand from the ground. "It won't happen again."

Harry didn't have any trouble finding the will to be elsewhere this time. He stumbled out of the darkness into their bedroom half a second later. His furious, frustrated yell carried outside to the garden, as did the loud shattering of the bedroom windows as a stray burst of his magic smashed them to pieces.

* * *

_Authors' Note: So… instead of finishing the small amount of work left to do on the next chapter of 'Yew and Holly', we wrote this instead. Because reasons. We hope you all enjoyed this chapter and thank you to everyone who has left feedback for us - we love you all. _


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